BBC Genome Blog FeedNews, highlights and banter from the team at BBC Genome – the website that shows you all the BBC’s listings between 1923 and 2009 (and tells you what was on the day you were born!) Join us and share all the oddities, archive gems and historical firsts you find while digging around…2018-12-08T09:30:00+00:00Zend_Feed_Writerhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/genome2018-12-08T09:30:00+00:002018-12-08T09:30:00+00:00http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/genome/entries/ec09407d-09b6-4321-a8da-e5e6b78557fcAndrew Martin <div class="component"> <img src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p06tvbr8.jpg" class="rsp-img" alt=""data-img-src-68="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/160xn/p06tvbr8.jpg" data-img-src-176="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/192xn/p06tvbr8.jpg" data-img-src-208="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/256xn/p06tvbr8.jpg" data-img-src-304="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/336xn/p06tvbr8.jpg" data-img-src-440="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/480xn/p06tvbr8.jpg" data-img-src-576="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p06tvbr8.jpg" ><p><em>Radio Times marked the extension of broadcasting hours on the Forces Programme in February 1940 with this artwork cover</em></p> </div> <div class="component prose"><p><strong>Following the release of the 1920s and 1930s Radio Times magazines, BBC Genome is now pleased to be able to share the pages of the Radio Times from the 1940s with its readers. </strong></p>
<p>It was a traumatic decade, with World War Two spanning the first half and the start of the Cold War dominating the rest. While Radio Times reflects some aspects of these events, it is of course as ever a record of scheduled BBC radio and television programmes. There are fewer pages to release this time compared with other decades, as wartime rationing and post-war austerity saw Radio Times, like other newspapers and magazines, reduced to a fraction of its previous page count. There was also a reduction in the amount of broadcast content, with all domestic radio services combined into the <a title="Home Service" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/schedules/bbchomeservice/basic/1940-01-01" target="_blank">Home Service</a> at the outbreak of war, and television closing down for the duration – although a new radio service, the <a title="Forces Programme" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/schedules/forces/1940-02-18" target="_blank">Forces Programme</a>, began in January 1940.</p>
<p>Despite the privations and perils of wartime, the first half of the 1940s was a golden age for radio. The BBC’s programme departments were scattered about the country to avoid the danger of bombing wiping out the heart of the Corporation in one fell swoop, but the BBC soon settled down again, and some production continued at various sites in London, despite the bombs: though Broadcasting House was twice damaged by bombs, with some members of staff killed.</p></div> <div class="component"> <img src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p06tvccj.jpg" class="rsp-img" alt=""data-img-src-68="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/160xn/p06tvccj.jpg" data-img-src-176="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/192xn/p06tvccj.jpg" data-img-src-208="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/256xn/p06tvccj.jpg" data-img-src-304="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/336xn/p06tvccj.jpg" data-img-src-440="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/480xn/p06tvccj.jpg" data-img-src-576="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p06tvccj.jpg" ><p><em>Tommy Handley of ITMA (or in this case, ITSA - It's That Sand Again - for the summer 1941 series) was the biggest radio star of the 1940s</em></p> </div> <div class="component prose"><p>Wartime also meant censorship, in case anything broadcast could deliberately or accidentally be of use to the enemy. Outside broadcast programmes were usually billed as coming from “<a title="somewhere in England" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/f62b97108539403486235ad9f329ef51" target="_blank">somewhere in England</a>”, so there would be no chance of the propaganda coup of targeting their location during a broadcast. Radio news became a vital service, with the old embargo on bulletins before the evening papers were published being dropped, and many more bulletins were broadcast through the day. Mobile recording came into its own so that actual battlefield conditions could be reported, and BBC news was careful to report defeats as well as victories, so that when there was good news it would be believed.</p>
<p>It was a time of great broadcasting personalities – singers like <a title="Vera Lynn" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/1bce4bba621146e894e5fde418da45a6" target="_blank">Vera Lynn</a>, the “Forces’ Sweetheart”, <a title="Anne Shelton" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/3c8badcf81e6449cbf2d754e1b5f5fb7" target="_blank">Anne Shelton</a> and the young <a title="Petula Clark" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/4cf87128c3b3428f98b68e1c6b6d3788" target="_blank">Petula Clark</a>, comedians such as <a title="Tommy Handley" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/c5cb42b2ecfa457998a328daedb82d9b" target="_blank">Tommy Handley</a> (whose series ITMA came into its own during the war), Jack Warner in <a title="Garrison Theatre" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/3c1da57afd434f5aa7eebc90a1977ca0" target="_blank">Garrison Theatre</a>, and his sisters <a title="Elsie and Doris Waters" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/83580c9a4d2345f990236b2aa1603ef6" target="_blank">Elsie and Doris Waters</a> (as Gert and Daisy). Some performers had been called up into the forces, like <a title="Richard Murdoch" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/d735a354fbf54d97b9c928a87168e392" target="_blank">Richard Murdoch</a>, formerly Arthur Askey’s sidekick in Band Waggon, who became the lead in Much-Binding-in-the-Marsh, alongside future star Kenneth Horne.</p>
<p>Other prominent programmes in the war years included <a title="Music While You Work" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/992ef6d627f84fb3ae8527f68a5c8881" target="_blank">Music While You Work</a>, <a title="Workers' Playtime" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/8f9c66a472234a4f964be68bb3410399" target="_blank">Workers’ Playtime</a>, ITMA, <a title="Happidrome" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/4625a46d60984c70a1853b91150e4a85" target="_blank">Happidrome</a>, <a title="Navy Mixture" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/f187d6f186b04284bda920c12220fef7" target="_blank">Navy Mixture</a> and <a title="Desert Island Discs" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/567183dba43e49018003e065bf4b65f0" target="_blank">Desert Island Discs</a>. In the series <a title="The Kitchen Front" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/1a835217035e4afea0b7da07519e3e7e" target="_blank">The Kitchen Front</a>, celebrities gave talks on food and how to cook it – it later broadened to other subjects, including talks by the Radio Doctor (Charles Hill, future chairman of both the ITA and the BBC). Keeping fit was encouraged by programmes like <a title="Up in the Morning Early" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/763736406c2143109fd713caaa7c4959" target="_blank">Up in the Morning Early</a> and <a title="The Daily Dozen" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/9cf763e55ddb4a9db3d68fd68019fb06" target="_blank">The Daily Dozen</a>, while gardening programmes helped with the government's <a title="Dig for Victory" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/9477745b40e545949d38ef4b086b7d38" target="_blank">Dig for Victory</a> campaign. In The Brains Trust (originally, confusingly, called Any Questions) academics and graduates of the “University of Life” discussed questions sent in by the public, from the meaning of life to how flies walk on the ceiling.</p></div> <div class="component"> <img src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p06tvdvv.jpg" class="rsp-img" alt=""data-img-src-68="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/160xn/p06tvdvv.jpg" data-img-src-176="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/192xn/p06tvdvv.jpg" data-img-src-208="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/256xn/p06tvdvv.jpg" data-img-src-304="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/336xn/p06tvdvv.jpg" data-img-src-440="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/480xn/p06tvdvv.jpg" data-img-src-576="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p06tvdvv.jpg" ><p><em>In 1941 this Radio Times cover highlighted a programme in which children evacuated to America talked to their families at home</em></p> </div> <div class="component prose"><p>Drama ranged from the <a title="classics" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/fe842344c416441282b301be41697ec9" target="_blank">classics</a> to <a title="thrillers" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/5b0d63cd976a465385b982a63aede1a8" target="_blank">thrillers</a>, and such groundbreaking pieces as Dorothy L. Sayers’ <a title="The Man Born to Be King" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/fa9f96626a8b4a9f97d05166fd72e25c" target="_blank">The Man Born to Be King</a>, about the life of Jesus, which was first heard in Children’s Hour. A new feature followed the evening news, the Postscripts, including writer J.B. Priestley’s famous tribute to the “little ships” of Dunkirk in 1940. The BBC’s worldwide reach meant that as well as providing a network of broadcasts to forces and civilian populations, including those in enemy and occupied countries, those abroad could communicate back to their loved ones. This included <a title="children who had been evacuated" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/5583dc9ae6c74e6cab099b3eba291ed5" target="_blank">children who had been evacuated</a>, not just to the countryside but to other countries such as Canada and Australia.</p>
<p>The new Forces Programme provided a diet of lighter fare, and although it was mainly aimed at those in uniform it was a welcome addition for the general audience. In 1944 it merged with the General Overseas Service to become the <a title="General Forces Programme" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/schedules/generalforces/1944-02-27" target="_blank">General Forces Programme</a>. In 1945, between VE Day and VJ Day, its domestic wavelength became the <a title="Light Programme" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/schedules/light/1945-07-29" target="_blank">Light Programme</a>, ancestor of Radio 2. That continued the spirit of the Forces Programme by offering less demanding fare than the Home Service, while the most “highbrow” forms of culture were given their own outlet in the <a title="Third Programme" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/schedules/third/1946-09-29" target="_blank">Third Programme</a> from 1946.</p></div> <div class="component"> <img src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p06tvcyr.jpg" class="rsp-img" alt=""data-img-src-68="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/160xn/p06tvcyr.jpg" data-img-src-176="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/192xn/p06tvcyr.jpg" data-img-src-208="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/256xn/p06tvcyr.jpg" data-img-src-304="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/336xn/p06tvcyr.jpg" data-img-src-440="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/480xn/p06tvcyr.jpg" data-img-src-576="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p06tvcyr.jpg" ><p><em>Radio Times marked Victory Day in 1946, which comprised a parade of fighting forces through London, which was also televised, and a firework display</em></p> </div> <div class="component prose"><p>There was a surge in new programmes, many of which would become famous, and some lasting for decades, even to the present day: <a title="Ray's a Laugh" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/17a647bca2374f29a2b3da2513bf2b7d" target="_blank">Ray’s a Laugh</a>, <a title="Take It from Here" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/ba6ac3a8b1274d26b5121dfcf776bdec" target="_blank">Take It from Here</a>, <a title="Housewives' Choice" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/ca52d4199ba9490795242d85eed039b1" target="_blank">Housewives’ Choice</a>, <a title="Woman's Hour" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/62cfe452286b4b76b807423628a32f60" target="_blank">Woman’s Hour</a>, <a title="Dick Barton - Special Agent" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/7ff88b2bc7624a8d82835d82e47ff80a" target="_blank">Dick Barton – Special Agent</a>, <a title="Any Questions" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/3d408b68934952306e5eb1b26d587f92" target="_blank">Any Questions</a>… Many new talents emerged from the forces: <a title="Spike Milligan" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/46bf98b46ed7450883b8689aa1993740" target="_blank">Spike Milligan</a>, <a title="Peter Sellers" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/e2ec157bd6bc4b67b8ab471da957cb0e" target="_blank">Peter Sellers</a>, <a title="Harry Secombe" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/0498395c96914d86934b42215162d69f" target="_blank">Harry Secombe</a>, <a title="Tony Hancock" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/3c5cbeb8857b4a4b848dc9a04a9d4ceb" target="_blank">Tony Hancock</a> and <a title="Jimmy Edwards" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/99e94533af474e4b9d7d70699a57ebb5" target="_blank">Jimmy Edwards</a> all began to broadcast regularly in the 40s, leading to their domination of radio comedy in the next decade.</p>
<p>Television resumed in time to show the <a title="Victory Parade" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/f12ea125e2e04516bdcf8a22d8d03a11" target="_blank">Victory Parade</a> as an outside broadcast in June 1946, though the actual <a title="opening programmes" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/9a662f5f0c524f25b7cef293b667aab9" target="_blank">opening programmes</a> included a repeat of the Mickey Mouse cartoon that had been the last pre-war transmission. Other outside broadcasts included the <a title="wedding of Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/5cc7b1a558254e758c7f9d0a923cc01f" target="_blank">wedding of Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh</a> in November 1947 and the <a title="London Olympic Games" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/befa16c8f1594662b4a3c8f18ee0d95c" target="_blank">London Olympic Games</a> in 1948. BBC experiments in recording television began in 1947, and another innovation the following January was the <a title="Television Newsreel" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/cf33279a279f45658b32c336eed8b498" target="_blank">Television Newsreel</a>. In 1949, a second transmitter opened at <a title="Sutton Coldfield" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/35508c70f3274fa9abc3a8c7ee47d02a" target="_blank">Sutton Coldfield</a>, starting the wider coverage of television that would continue in the 1950s.</p>
<p>The 1940s were a time of crisis and change for the BBC as for the nation. The original listings, articles, photographs and illustrations, letters and adverts and all the other elements that make up the complete issues of Radio Times, now make it possible for everyone to get a greater insight into the United Kingdom at war and in peace time during this momentous decade. </p></div>
2018-11-21T15:35:28+00:002018-11-21T15:35:28+00:00http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/genome/entries/ca929d9f-431c-48f7-a97c-d51e99f98fc7 <div class="component"> <img src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p06sfrk4.jpg" class="rsp-img" alt=""data-img-src-68="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/160xn/p06sfrk4.jpg" data-img-src-176="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/192xn/p06sfrk4.jpg" data-img-src-208="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/256xn/p06sfrk4.jpg" data-img-src-304="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/336xn/p06sfrk4.jpg" data-img-src-440="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/480xn/p06sfrk4.jpg" data-img-src-576="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p06sfrk4.jpg" ><p><em>The young cast of Choirboys Unite! exchange words with the vicar (played by Derek Francis). Michael Coffman (front row, middle) played the lead - Harry.</em></p> </div> <div class="component prose"><p><strong>BBC Genome revisits a live Christmas TV programme with an unusual cast, with the help of one of those involved.</strong></p>
<p>Calling Michael Coffman, Reginald Smith, Trevor Bottrell, Derek Williams, John Haywood, Geoffrey Wali, John Bright, Patrick McLoughlin… David K Smith wants to know what happened to you - and so do we at Genome!</p>
<p>Schoolboys in the early 1960s, these lads were completely untrained performers "chosen from Secondary Modern schools in Birmingham", as the Radio Times put it. They made up the bulk of the cast for a Christmas comedy in 1961: Choirboys Unite!</p>
<p>The programme went out live at 8.30pm on 21 December, with a seasonal story about an inner city choir going on strike over their payments for Christmas carols. Live TV drama was not unusual then, but for a largely amateur cast who'd never done any acting like this before, what must it have been like?</p>
<p>David K Smith, who was one of the boys chosen, remembers: “You had to make sure you walked in the right place and along the right line. You had to take care not to bump in to anyone. Of course you had to get it right.”</p></div> <div class="component"> <img src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p06sfscz.jpg" class="rsp-img" alt=""data-img-src-68="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/160xn/p06sfscz.jpg" data-img-src-176="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/192xn/p06sfscz.jpg" data-img-src-208="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/256xn/p06sfscz.jpg" data-img-src-304="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/336xn/p06sfscz.jpg" data-img-src-440="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/480xn/p06sfscz.jpg" data-img-src-576="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p06sfscz.jpg" ><p><em>David Smith appearing in Choirboys Unite! in 1961</em></p> </div> <div class="component prose"><p>The production crew also had a responsible job. The television script includes a list of the numerous camera and sound positions that the crew had to hit to be in the right place at the right time. In a live transmission there wasn’t the opportunity to do a second take as in a modern pre-recorded production, or to get the individually-lit shots that are expected now using a single camera. Though the crew would have been used to making programmes this way, for them, and for the professional actors, live drama was always a nerve-wracking experience.</p>
<p>Writer David Turner had had success at the BBC since leaving teaching - in Birmingham - to become a playwright. His other BBC TV work had included Fresh as Paint and The Train Set, but he later became famous for his stage play Semi-Detached, which made it to Broadway. In Choirboys Unite!, he conjures a plot reflective of the social anxieties of the age, workers v bosses, kids v authority, while still being a period piece of early post-war Britain.</p>
<p>At a time of local strikes at car factories in Birmingham, Choirboys Unite! presented the concerns of its time, locally rooted and brought to life with home-grown performers. David was one of 13 boys hand-picked from inner city schools in Birmingham to appear in the programme.</p></div> <div class="component prose"><p>He remembers finding out his successful audition was actually for BBC TV: “A few of the lads in my class were asked to read some words out loud, but we didn’t know what it was for. After that I was asked to go to the BBC studios at Gosta Green, then to Pebble Mill and later to London by coach for a TV test.</p>
<p>“Eventually, I was told I’d been picked to appear in a play for BBC TV that was going to be broadcast live. I was chosen along with 13 other lads from inner-city schools in Birmingham. None of us had done any acting before.”</p></div> <div class="component"> <img src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p06sftxl.jpg" class="rsp-img" alt=""data-img-src-68="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/160xn/p06sftxl.jpg" data-img-src-176="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/192xn/p06sftxl.jpg" data-img-src-208="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/256xn/p06sftxl.jpg" data-img-src-304="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/336xn/p06sftxl.jpg" data-img-src-440="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/480xn/p06sftxl.jpg" data-img-src-576="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p06sftxl.jpg" ><p><em>How Choirboys Unite! was promoted in the pages of Radio Times</em></p> </div> <div class="component prose"><p>The decision by BBC producers to rely on a cast of untrained actors was a brave one. But David K Smith remembers the work that was invested to bring the cast up to scratch. The boys were taken “backwards and forwards to rehearse”, he recalls. “We even went to Ealing Studios.”</p>
<p>For a few weeks before the broadcast, they stayed in London. “It was quite a different life to what we were used to,” says David. “The food and things we had. We were treated in a lovely way. Everyone was very respectful to us. It was mind-blowing at the time, to be taken to London on a train. The only time I’d even been on a coach before was to go and see the Blackpool lights.”</p>
<p>In those days, BBC studios played host to a number of famous actors and David and his peers were “gobsmacked” to find themselves sitting with and chatting to the likes of Conrad Philips, Jack Warner and Frankie Vaughan at the BBC’s new Television Centre in West London.</p>
<p>It must have been a culture shock for the 13 boys. In David’s case, signing the paperwork for BBC producers required special attention and a trip to the school’s headmaster. “When you lived in the inner cities of Birmingham in those days, you’d always take anything official to school for the head teacher to check it, so when a contract from the BBC arrived by post, that’s what my mother did.”</p>
<p>The headmaster at David’s school gave his approval and David’s first professional job began, for which he was to receive £25. “We were even given 10 shillings of pocket money a day and at the end of each week I had £2, which I gave straight to my mom.”</p></div> <div class="component"> <img src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p06sft34.jpg" class="rsp-img" alt=""data-img-src-68="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/160xn/p06sft34.jpg" data-img-src-176="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/192xn/p06sft34.jpg" data-img-src-208="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/256xn/p06sft34.jpg" data-img-src-304="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/336xn/p06sft34.jpg" data-img-src-440="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/480xn/p06sft34.jpg" data-img-src-576="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p06sft34.jpg" ><p><em>David Smith as he is in 2018</em></p> </div> <div class="component prose"><p>The day of the transmission arrived. David remembers the pep talk they received from producer, Don Taylor. “He said: ‘I know you can do it, you’re all good lads. Do it for Birmingham!’ We all managed not to look at the camera and not make any mistakes. At the end the producers were so happy it had all gone well. “Well done lads, we knew you could do it!”’</p>
<p>David did not go on to be an actor but he still wonders what happened to the friends he made on set and what they went on to do. He hopes the former choirboys can one day have a reunion. For him, Choirboys Unite! remains an important milestone.</p>
<p>“After it was all over,” he says, “I walked up my street and I vowed to myself that I’d always earn my own money. It took me a while to settle back in to ordinary life and the memories of that film have always stayed with me.</p>
<p>“It’s a great honour when you look back.”</p>
<p><em>The young cast of Choirboys Unite were: </em></p>
<p><em>Reginald Smith as Gordon, Derek Williams as Jimmy, Michael Coffman as Harry, Patrick McLoughlin as John, Geoffrey Wali as Sid, Alan Amos, David Florey, John Bright as Brian, David Watkins, John Haywood as Barry, Colin Trueman, David K. Smith and Wayne Ward.</em></p></div>
2018-10-05T10:47:58+01:002018-10-05T10:47:58+01:00http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/genome/entries/7cb8e5b5-1ba2-47c3-8de4-789a0de9d328Andrew Martin <div class="component"> <img src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p06n1kvj.jpg" class="rsp-img" alt=""data-img-src-68="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/160xn/p06n1kvj.jpg" data-img-src-176="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/192xn/p06n1kvj.jpg" data-img-src-208="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/256xn/p06n1kvj.jpg" data-img-src-304="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/336xn/p06n1kvj.jpg" data-img-src-440="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/480xn/p06n1kvj.jpg" data-img-src-576="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p06n1kvj.jpg" ><p><em>William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton and Jon Pertwee in a publicity still for The Three Doctors (1972/3)</em></p> </div> <div class="component prose"><p>On Sunday 7 October 2018, television history is made with the full debut of Jodie Whittaker as the first woman to play the lead in Doctor Who. Leaving aside doubles, stand-ins, spoofs, and John Hurt in 2013’s The Day of the Doctor, 13 actors will now have played the Doctor on television since the series <a title="began in 1963" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/8f81c193ba224e84981f353cae480d49" target="_blank">began in 1963</a>.</p>
<p><a title="William Hartnell" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/search/0/20?order=asc&q=%22william+hartnell%22#search" target="_blank">William Hartnell</a> was the first of these. He had a long career in films, often playing sergeants and other authority figures. He first broadcast on BBC radio in 1931, while his television debut was in 1953 in an excerpt from the stage play <a title="Seagulls Over Sorrento" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/8a149857b8d346418b2f74fddcdca06c" target="_blank">Seagulls Over Sorrento</a>. His next credited BBC television appearance was a decade later, in Doctor Who. Before that his only major TV role was in ITV sitcom The Army Game, playing a sergeant-major. However, it was his role as a seedy rugby league talent scout in the film <a title="This Sporting Life" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/cf96cc49d4024296a5b33cc860a8013f" target="_blank">This Sporting Life</a> that inspired producer Verity Lambert to cast him as the Doctor.</p>
<p>Hartnell was succeeded by <a title="Patrick Troughton" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/13b7a58d16ba4711a628b953ad00e9ca" target="_blank">Patrick Troughton</a> in 1966. Troughton’s long television pedigree began with Christopher Marlowe’s <a title="Edward II" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/b291dcb47da84422a0e43f045d8dd6c0" target="_blank">Edward II</a> in 1947. A few months later he appeared in <a title="RUR (Rossum's Universal Robots)" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/65ea4620936a4e28ae52d3ab6ed3aca6" target="_blank">RUR (Rossum’s Universal Robots)</a>, the play which introduced the word “robot” to the English language. Troughton’s major TV roles included the 1953 version of <a title="Robin Hood" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/789ae986d30c4748b94facaf69461752" target="_blank">Robin Hood</a>, religious drama <a title="Paul of Tarsus" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/28f6872f2eaa45698ded096e76b0b939" target="_blank">Paul of Tarsus</a>, and Quilp in <a title="The Old Curiosity Shop" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/2303f801295c4239a025a4b9938f5e7d" target="_blank">The Old Curiosity Shop</a>. After turning down a supporting part in <a title="Doctor Who" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/84c16c2796fc442c9aeef103a11cc4a4" target="_blank">Doctor Who</a> in 1966, his final role before becoming the Doctor was in fantasy series <a title="Adam Adamant Lives!" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/456f39d3aa104137aa9d78eb3daa6e00" target="_blank">Adam Adamant Lives!</a></p>
<p>Jon Pertwee was the third Doctor, with his <a title="debut episode" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/ee6faf0c07f645ba854664d5f410c95b" target="_blank">debut episode</a> broadcast on the first Saturday of the 1970s. His previous BBC career was predominantly in radio comedy, beginning in the 1940s with <a title="Merry-Go-Round" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/9bda7d14c661467aa4b6bba633ee3da8" target="_blank">Merry-Go-Round</a>, and including <a title="Up the Pole" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/449e51ea7cb4417eb0bc055a4f2aed1a" target="_blank">Up the Pole</a>, <a title="Puffney Post Office" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/a443008157a84b179f331a8258f5a4ca" target="_blank">Puffney Post Office</a>, <a title="Pertwee's Progress" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/3412db6f6fee41879d0686cdc87cbe34" target="_blank">Pertwee’s Progress</a>, and from 1959, <a title="The Navy Lark" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/f2f773b7c38e47dfbef4366d94f492a1" target="_blank">The Navy Lark</a>. His first television appearance was compering a 1946 variety programme, <a title="Little Show" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/9ea5576863a3478fbbf4fa06c9b68422" target="_blank">Little Show</a>. Pertwee was known as an entertainer and voice artist more than a straight actor, and when cast as the Doctor and advised to “play himself”, he confessed that he wasn’t quite sure who that was.</p></div> <div class="component"> <img src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p06n1lk6.jpg" class="rsp-img" alt=""data-img-src-68="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/160xn/p06n1lk6.jpg" data-img-src-176="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/192xn/p06n1lk6.jpg" data-img-src-208="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/256xn/p06n1lk6.jpg" data-img-src-304="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/336xn/p06n1lk6.jpg" data-img-src-440="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/480xn/p06n1lk6.jpg" data-img-src-576="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p06n1lk6.jpg" ><p><em>Sylvester McCoy hands over the Tardis key to Paul McGann for the 1996 TV movie</em></p> </div> <div class="component prose"><p>When Tom Baker took over <a title="the role of the Doctor" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/9d2bcf1148a346f3a9db787229bfa53d" target="_blank">the role of the Doctor</a> in 1974, <span style="text-decoration: underline;">he</span> might have known who he was but most of the public didn’t. Ironically he has been closely identified with the part ever since, having played it longer than <a title="anyone else" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/67c5594534524d31af51d3a5dbe2dad8" target="_blank">anyone else</a>. Baker’s first BBC credit was in <a title="Dixon of Dock Green" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/228e076a6f264ea79b2bf46fedb7e7c4" target="_blank">Dixon of Dock Green</a> in 1968, and he made a handful of other TV appearances pre-Doctor Who, most notably opposite Maggie Smith in the 1972 BBC production of <a title="The Millionairess" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/a47ae7e3cf894fdc84d0904fe68788a1" target="_blank">The Millionairess</a>.</p>
<p>When Baker finally left the series in 1981, his replacement was <a title="Peter Davison" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/b3fad07afbe548e29a51cbf61acd4fca" target="_blank">Peter Davison</a>, famous from the veterinary drama <a title="All Creatures Great and Small" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/d321bed665b442f1befad78d8e740aff" target="_blank">All Creatures Great and Small</a>. Davison took the advice of his predecessor Patrick Troughton not to stay for more than <a title="three years" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/a0545d9687314b85a84ae55dd6442d5e" target="_blank">three years</a>. He was the first Doctor to have grown up with the show, and would go on to be the father-in-law of a future Doctor, David Tennant.</p>
<p><a title="Colin Baker" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/0c9b701d61644817a8f7a34e9514071e" target="_blank">Colin Baker</a> followed Davison in 1984, but his tenure was to be one of the shortest. He was the first Doctor to have appeared in the series before, as a <a title="guard commander" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/35d7637ce13e4654a75213dda1d29424" target="_blank">guard commander</a> on the Time Lord planet Gallifrey. Baker was best known from contemporary BBC drama <a title="The Brothers" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/28ed0b9d327d4dffbe2d6105156815fd" target="_blank">The Brothers</a>, but many of his earlier BBC appearances had been in period pieces, beginning with <a title="The Roads to Freedom" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/61acba98a2a34518a70fbd86b5b5eebd" target="_blank">The Roads to Freedom</a> in 1970. He also made a notable guest appearance in sci-fi series <a title="Blake's 7" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/33a6b3f9cdf14abf9bf03d910e7a65a0" target="_blank">Blake’s 7</a>.</p>
<p>The next Doctor, the last of the "classic" era, was <a title="Sylvester McCoy" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/47cb14baa5ed4463bd7a210bb4a04e0d" target="_blank">Sylvester McCoy</a> (aka Sylveste, early on). His performing career began with <a title="Ken Campbell's Roadshow" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/cc624077bf1c416eaa4fe9297c501ddd" target="_blank">Ken Campbell’s Roadshow</a>, a company of entertainers including <a title="Bob Hoskins" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/0d58e8ce8e5d471eafd5b40b5da61d29" target="_blank">Bob Hoskins</a>. In 1974 McCoy joined children’s series <a title="Vision On" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/14a043db39c24816a71e8e6cc5923e81" target="_blank">Vision On</a>, and he later appeared in <a title="Jigsaw" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/e2a6f6b09e9e4430a1318cf7298e7f3b" target="_blank">Jigsaw</a>, <a title="Eureka" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/fc05c58cbfa3420fb884dce640f08991" target="_blank">Eureka</a>, and <a title="Big Jim and the Figaro Club" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/bc062bd745a84788ad3486e872aad50a" target="_blank">Big Jim and the Figaro Club</a>. In 1989 Doctor Who was “rested” by the BBC, but four years later McCoy appeared, along with Jon Pertwee, Tom Baker, Peter Davison and Colin Baker, in Dimensions in Time, a Doctor Who/EastEnders crossover made for <a title="Children in Need" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/587192caa60249c0b07cfc4be0674617" target="_blank">Children in Need</a>.</p>
<p>In 1996 a mainly US-funded <a title="TV movie" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/ad81bfa5101345e0ad6c5603f4be7dc2" target="_blank">TV movie</a> of Doctor Who was produced, and McCoy again appeared as the Doctor, regenerating into Paul McGann a third of the way through. McGann is the shortest-reigning “official” Doctor, as his only other television appearance as the Time Lord was in 2013 mini-episode The Night of the Doctor. <a title="McGann" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/search/0/20?order=asc&q=%22paul+mcgann%22#search" target="_blank">McGann</a> first appeared on BBC television in a 1982 Play for Today, Whistling Wally, but after co-starring in snooker drama <a title="Give Us a Break" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/1c452313404c4b15ba30895b2f9d7b98" target="_blank">Give Us a Break</a>, he appeared in the controversial <a title="The Monocled Mutineer" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/e86528148fe24527a777c4ebbf824ca2" target="_blank">The Monocled Mutineer</a>.</p></div> <div class="component"> <img src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p06n1m5s.jpg" class="rsp-img" alt=""data-img-src-68="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/160xn/p06n1m5s.jpg" data-img-src-176="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/192xn/p06n1m5s.jpg" data-img-src-208="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/256xn/p06n1m5s.jpg" data-img-src-304="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/336xn/p06n1m5s.jpg" data-img-src-440="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/480xn/p06n1m5s.jpg" data-img-src-576="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p06n1m5s.jpg" ><p><em>Smith, Tennant and Hurt, the three Doctors 2013 style</em></p> </div> <div class="component prose"><p>In 2003, the <a title="40th anniversary of Doctor Who" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/0ec4aa632fcb4043a607cf372c7af540" target="_blank">40th anniversary of Doctor Who</a>, it was finally announced that a new series was in development, which began transmission in <a title="2005" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/9040bca2a8b84eada35cecfcae57e37d" target="_blank">2005</a>. Christopher Eccleston, an actor known for roles in series like Cracker, <a title="Our Friends in the North" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/fa7a5ee8fb964341b8b992c99d777b49" target="_blank">Our Friends in the North</a> and The Second Coming, was cast as the 9th Doctor, but elected to leave after the first series. He was replaced by David Tennant, whose first full episode was <a title="The Christmas Invasion" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/d8b8f32ee82f46f9be31e8b0ac46e24a" target="_blank">The Christmas Invasion</a>, which established a tradition of regular Christmas Day episodes.</p>
<p>Tennant first made an impact in 90s drama series <a title="Takin' Over the Asylum" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/27b866e5bf7e4857919cf77178b40492" target="_blank">Takin’ Over the Asylum</a>, however his earliest BBC role was in 1989 play <a title="Biting the Hands" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/32ccc6e6a7d44f3a8f103612c3a6e1c9" target="_blank">Biting the Hands</a>, by Rona Munro – who also wrote the last “classic” Doctor Who story to be televised, <a title="Survival" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/f799dc6fa934421abe5f1320c31c97a8" target="_blank">Survival</a>. In 2005 Tennant played the title role in Russell T Davies’ <a title="Casanova" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/8da37dec559047c2b162bf327786605b" target="_blank">Casanova</a>, and was also in a live remake of 50s sci-fi drama <a title="The Quatermass Experiment" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/a1a7780a380448aab41eb48b4959058e" target="_blank">The Quatermass Experiment</a>.</p>
<p>The next Doctor was the relatively unknown Matt Smith, the youngest actor to play the part so far. Smith’s BBC television debut was in Philip Pullman’s <a title="The Ruby in the Smoke" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/f08dbdd78c31424c9fcc5ebea6e7eb79" target="_blank">The Ruby in the Smoke</a> in 2006, starring Billie Piper, who had just left Doctor Who <a title="herself" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/dc3b0b5bcf194e14a44aa39e7772c616" target="_blank">herself</a>. Smith’s time on the programme included its 50th anniversary in 2013: in the special episode The Day of the Doctor he teamed up with David Tennant and John Hurt (as the “War Doctor”).</p>
<p>When Smith left Doctor Who shortly afterwards, his successor was Peter Capaldi, who was roughly the same age as William Hartnell had been when cast as the Doctor. He was the second Doctor to have appeared in the series before, in 2008’s <a title="The Fires of Pompeii" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/1c8f0e872c8a40c285181ca8a37943c0" target="_blank">The Fires of Pompeii</a>. Capaldi too had grown up watching Doctor Who, even having a letter about the show published in Radio Times in 1974.</p>
<p>By 2013 the calls for a female Doctor, begun by Tom Baker when he left over thirty years before, had gone from being treated as a joke to a serious possibility. The next incarnation of the Master, the Doctor’s Time Lord nemesis, was a woman: Missy, as she was known, played by <a title="Michelle Gomez" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/search/0/20?order=asc&q=%22michelle+gomez%22#search" target="_blank">Michelle Gomez</a>.</p>
<p><a title="Jodie Whittaker" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/search/0/20?order=asc&q=%22jodie+whittaker%22#search" target="_blank">Jodie Whittaker</a>, who now assumes the mantle of the Doctor, had her first BBC credit 12 years ago, in Alan Plater’s play The Last Will and Testament of Billy Two-Sheds. She was also in BBC period dramas <a title="Tess of the d'Urbervilles" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/d27169908d1849b0afbd74e926c4dafa" target="_blank">Tess of the d’Urbervilles</a> and <a title="Cranford" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/4235b29342234156bf6990d1e8fc30d9" target="_blank">Cranford</a>, but her most prominent role was in ITV crime drama Broadchurch, written by the new Doctor Who showrunner Chris Chibnall.</p>
<p>Of course, true Doctor Who fans know that Jodie Whittaker is not the first woman to play the Doctor. The Curse of Fatal Death, shown in 1999 as part of <a title="Comic Relief" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/649bea73be9146b9ace0a710fab42e49" target="_blank">Comic Relief</a>, was an affectionate spoof written by <a title="Steven Moffat" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/ba3b6ef119fe4e8085a9d6be72ffaa8e" target="_blank">Steven Moffat</a>, with <a title="Rowan Atkinson" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/9b064df180134a4e8f21500c4d5969ec" target="_blank">Rowan Atkinson</a> as the Doctor. At the end of the story the Doctor regenerates successively into <a title="Richard E. Grant" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/452214ce50544633ae623397547c9fba" target="_blank">Richard E. Grant</a>, <a title="Jim Broadbent" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/cd0d0bccb4484220b17adea064dd0465" target="_blank">Jim Broadbent</a> and <a title="Hugh Grant" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/c9ee63c9b9ed45ddb0e582a765653c72" target="_blank">Hugh Grant</a> – and then finally into <a title="Joanna Lumley" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/da159b3c8e274eb8b1e47f9832222fec" target="_blank">Joanna Lumley</a>…</p></div>
2018-09-06T12:16:20+01:002018-09-06T12:16:20+01:00http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/genome/entries/448c864d-3fdc-40ec-a372-9cc098b64d8c <div class="component"> <img src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p06l5qh7.jpg" class="rsp-img" alt=""data-img-src-68="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/160xn/p06l5qh7.jpg" data-img-src-176="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/192xn/p06l5qh7.jpg" data-img-src-208="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/256xn/p06l5qh7.jpg" data-img-src-304="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/336xn/p06l5qh7.jpg" data-img-src-440="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/480xn/p06l5qh7.jpg" data-img-src-576="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p06l5qh7.jpg" ><p><em>The billing from Radio Times that brought back fond memories for Jeanne King</em></p> </div> <div class="component prose"><p><strong>On 21 July 1955, BBC outside broadcast cameras went to visit a lively water spectacle in Bournemouth. The BBC Genome <a title="billing for the programme" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/0a133d525ae94b0da72ab32ef7f76054" target="_blank">billing for the programme</a>, The Bournemouth Aquashow, sparked a memory for one reader.</strong></p>
<p>Jeanne King was 20 years old when she spotted an advertisement in her local paper for a new type of water show. Experienced swimmers were invited to apply and attend a test at the Bournemouth Pier Baths.</p>
<p>The year was 1952, and as a keen swimmer with ballet training, this seemed right up Jeanne’s street. She decided to go and audition.</p>
<p>“I’d always been a swimmer,” she says. “It runs in my family. We are like fish!”</p>
<p>“At my test, I realised this was an entirely new way of swimming for me. I had to put my head and neck up and grin at people – I couldn’t just plough through the water with my face down. “It was important that we were looking at the audience.”</p>
<p>The complex water manoeuvres choreographed for the water-performers – or Aquabelles - owed much to classical dance, and Jeanne’s early ballet training stood her in good stead. Her audition was successful and she became one of the first Aquabelles, whose performances formed part of an annual “Aquashow” at the Pier Approach Baths in Bournemouth.</p>
<p>Training began for the 1952 season, which was due to start at Easter. A choreographer travelled from Blackpool to teach the swimmers their routines.</p>
<p>“We had to learn to do different strokes. Swimming with one hand forward – tap, tap, tap in three places. It was very balletic.</p>
<p>“We did something like a conga, you were moving all the time but your arms made different movements and we used to change direction: Three strokes forward, then to the left, then to the right.</p>
<p>“It was making patterns on the water.”</p>
<p>Often a successful move relied on the swimmer attaining stillness in most of the body – using the slightest movement of the legs to propel them through the pool. The arms could then complete elaborate movements with the grace of a dancer.</p></div> <div class="component"> <img src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p06kg60f.jpg" class="rsp-img" alt=""data-img-src-68="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/160xn/p06kg60f.jpg" data-img-src-176="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/192xn/p06kg60f.jpg" data-img-src-208="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/256xn/p06kg60f.jpg" data-img-src-304="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/336xn/p06kg60f.jpg" data-img-src-440="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/480xn/p06kg60f.jpg" data-img-src-576="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p06kg60f.jpg" ><p><em>Jeanne Manders, nee King, pictured with the other Aquabelles in 1953. Jeanne is right in the middle, 9th from the left or the right!</em></p> </div> <div class="component prose"><p>At that time, <a title="Outside broadcasts" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/search/0/20?order=asc&q=%22outside+broadcast%22&svc=9371533#search" target="_blank">outside broadcasts were a staple of television schedules</a>, and the chance to be taken to different locations and see what was going on - live as it happened - was an exciting novelty. Sport was, as now, one of the main attractions, but a wide variety of other spectacles was included, and each new stunt was widely publicised.</p>
<p>A Water Show was a complete spectacle, with dancers, acrobats and performers. Underneath the diving board, tarpaulins hung down into the water, allowing the Aquabelles to enter the pool unseen and then come out swimming. They swam under UV lighting that picked out different colours on their swimming costumes and hats. A pit at one end of the swimming pool was used to accommodate a lively orchestra.</p>
<p>“I just loved everything about it,” says Jeanne. “It was water ballet. Everything we did, it’s a bit like dancing to music. Our swimming strokes, everything - all went to the music.”</p>
<p>In 1955, Radio Times described the exercise of filming the “amphibious entertainment” at the Bournemouth Aquashow. “Cameras will have a three-fold task, keeping pace with goings-on in the pool, on the diving boards and on the stage which is erected above the pool itself.”</p>
<p>The high point for Jeanne came with the announcement that they would perform a special display in honour of Queen Elizabeth’s Coronation. The 16 Aquabelles’ finale was a "water mosaic", in which they floated in red white and blue costumes, spelling E II R in the water.</p>
<p>Was it the same as synchronised swimming? Not according to Jeanne: synchronised swimming is clever, but more mechanical, she says. The Aquabelle displays had much more in common with traditional dance. “It’s the difference between marching and gliding along,” she says.</p>
<p>Jeanne remained an Aquabelle until 1954, when she got married. The performances continued for years after that, including the one that was shown on BBC television in 1955.</p>
<p>Many local people remember being taken to see the show as children, says Jeanne, who often thinks of her days performing in the Water Show and wonders where her fellow Aquabelles are now.</p>
<p>“I’d love to find them.”</p></div>
2018-08-09T14:30:00+01:002018-08-09T14:30:00+01:00http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/genome/entries/d054ba77-304f-40c2-9b56-2ba0e6726c11Hugh Chignell <div class="component"> <img src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p06gzz6t.jpg" class="rsp-img" alt=""data-img-src-68="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/160xn/p06gzz6t.jpg" data-img-src-176="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/192xn/p06gzz6t.jpg" data-img-src-208="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/256xn/p06gzz6t.jpg" data-img-src-304="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/336xn/p06gzz6t.jpg" data-img-src-440="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/480xn/p06gzz6t.jpg" data-img-src-576="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p06gzz6t.jpg" ><p><em>Giles Cooper photographed in 1946. Image courtesy of the Giles Cooper estate.</em></p> </div> <div class="component prose"><p><em><strong>Guest blogger Professor Hugh Chignell, director of the Centre for Media History at Bournemouth University, looks back at the work of the prolific playwright Giles Cooper.</strong></em></p></div> <div class="component prose"><p>One of the things BBC Genome does so well is to remind us about people who made major contributions to broadcasting in the past but have now been forgotten. A good example of this neglect is the playwright, Giles Cooper, who was born 100 years ago this month.</p>
<p>Giles Cooper is probably best known for his adaptations of <a title="Maigret" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/521ad8f749d34476a4d4f03e41807104" target="_blank">Georges Simenon’s Maigret</a> novels for television but he was also one of the most prolific of all BBC radio dramatists. In a career lasting from 1950 to his early death in 1966, he wrote 12 plays for the Third Programme, 31 for the Home Service and seven for the Light Programme, a total of 50 different dramas. He deserves a special place in a history of radio drama not only because of his considerable output but because he probably did more than anyone to develop the drama written specifically for radio with plays like Under the Loofah Tree and Unman, Wittering and Zigo.</p>
<p>Giles Cooper was born in Dublin, in 1918, just a few miles from the birthplace of Samuel Beckett 12 years earlier. The family’s expectations were that he would join the diplomatic service. Instead, in an early act of rebellion, he attended the Webber Douglas School of Singing and Drama and left with an acting qualification aged 21, just as World War Two began. Giles Cooper’s wartime experiences had a decisive influence on his writing; he spent the first two and a half years in England, initially in the ranks and then as a commissioned officer, before embarking on a troop ship, eventually arriving in Mumbai before continuing on to the Burmese jungle where he endured the appalling conditions of jungle warfare for more than two years. A number of his most important plays concern military life and the tail-end of the British Empire.</p>
<p>In the late 1940s, Cooper experimented by writing stage plays and a novel before being encouraged to write for the BBC. In 1949 he completed two short radio plays, both of which were subsequently broadcast; Thieves Rush In and Never Get Out.</p>
<p>As BBC Genome reveals, following the broadcast of his first two radio dramas, Cooper was clearly considered a useful contributor of adaptations of stage plays, especially those filling the matinee slot on the Home Service. Then in 1952 he adapted Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist in 12 parts. His adaptation must have been approved of by senior staff in the Drama department because it led to Cooper being given a more permanent position. His main task as a BBC writer was adapting populist drama in long-running serials. A six-part television serial, Epitaph for a Spy and then Ngaio Marsh’s Artists in Crime, Dorothy L Sayer’s The Nine Tailors and William Golding’s Lord of the Flies.</p></div> <div class="component"> <img src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p06h034b.jpg" class="rsp-img" alt=""data-img-src-68="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/160xn/p06h034b.jpg" data-img-src-176="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/192xn/p06h034b.jpg" data-img-src-208="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/256xn/p06h034b.jpg" data-img-src-304="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/336xn/p06h034b.jpg" data-img-src-440="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/480xn/p06h034b.jpg" data-img-src-576="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p06h034b.jpg" ><p><em>The billing for Cooper's play Mathry Beacon, transmitted on the Third Programme on 18 June 1956. Cooper's first billing as a writer was in 1950, though he had featured on BBC radio as an actor before that</em></p> </div> <div class="component prose"><p><a title="Mathry Beacon" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/16352a729d8b4c989c394607262c1595" target="_blank">Mathry Beacon (1956)</a> was Cooper’s first radio drama success, a one hour thirty-five minute play for radio about a group of soldiers - all archetypes of army life - sent to guard a mysterious "deflector", designed to repel incoming missiles, during World War Two. Mathry Beacon is the name of the hill on which they are based, somewhere in Wales, and at the beginning of the play we hear a jazz trumpet and then the voices of the soldiers; two women, a Welshman, a "West Indian cockney" who plays the trumpet, an "educated man" and the man in charge, a retired sergeant-major, Lieutenant Gann. The soldiers arrive and are addressed by Gann in a parody of military jargon and meaningless barked orders.</p>
<p>The characters are all archetypes of army life; the sergeant-major talking nonsense (Gann), one naïve woman from the countryside (Betsie) and one more streetwise from the town (Rita), the jazz-playing West Indian (Olim), a crafty Welshman ("Taff") and the "educated man" (Blick) who is "very nearly but not quite an intellectual." Donald McWhinnie, the celebrated radio drama producer, created a drama which includes the sounds of "the deflector", making a variety of deep humming and other more mechanical sounds, a precursor to the Radiophonic Workshop, which was launched three years later in April 1958 and produced artificial sounds using a variety of techniques.</p>
<p>Giles Cooper’s next major work written specifically for radio The Disagreeable Oyster (1957) was controversial. Some senior staff in BBC Radio strongly disliked Cooper’s work and this included the Controller, Third Programme, John Morris. Morris reluctantly accepted the play, which was then broadcast four months later. </p>
<p>That <a title="The Disagreeable Oyster" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/d80cd287f82e4d15afd440f554636690" target="_blank">The Disagreeable Oyster</a> divided opinion in the BBC is not surprising, it is one of Cooper’s most experimental plays, with the main character divided in two and played by two different actors; Bundy Major is the Mervyn Bundy "we see walking about the streets" and Bundy Minor is his critical inner voice. It is one of Cooper’s most "absurd" plays and sexually explicit in places with multiple references to nudity and prostitution. Bundy has to travel to Leicester on urgent company business. When he arrives he has a series of adventures, which result in him being stripped by a group of rowdy women. Bundy, with his £34 pounds expenses, is freed from his controlling wife Alice, and the world is his oyster, but it is a very disagreeable one. </p>
<p>Cooper’s <a title="Under the Loofah Tree" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/0e657bf35e2241bda2476451c55535e6" target="_blank">Under the Loofah Tree</a> (1958) concerns Edward Thwaite, one of Cooper’s most down-trodden characters, oppressed by his wife and so taking refuge in the one place he is left alone, or so he thought, the bathroom. The play contains two simple elements, Edward’s extraordinary fantasies based on his life and the constant interruptions as different people, even an encyclopedia salesman, try to speak to him through the bathroom door. The play features a variety of sound effects throughout including voice distortion and other more creative experiments with sound and was one of the first radio plays to make use of the Radiophonic Workshop.</p></div> <div class="component"> <img src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p06gqg7p.jpg" class="rsp-img" alt=""data-img-src-68="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/160xn/p06gqg7p.jpg" data-img-src-176="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/192xn/p06gqg7p.jpg" data-img-src-208="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/256xn/p06gqg7p.jpg" data-img-src-304="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/336xn/p06gqg7p.jpg" data-img-src-440="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/480xn/p06gqg7p.jpg" data-img-src-576="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p06gqg7p.jpg" ><p><em>Peter Blythe in the TV version of Unman, Wittering and Zigo</em></p> </div> <div class="component prose"><p>Just three months after the August broadcast of Under the Loofah Tree, a completely different example of Giles Cooper’s writing was heard on the Third Programme, the highly successful story of a school-master terrorised by his pupils, <a title="Unman, Wittering and Zigo" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/24688f59a4c04e37a4639f29b08c66c1" target="_blank">Unman, Wittering and Zigo</a> (1958). The play is the story of John Ebony, an unsuccessful school master who arrives at Chantrey, a conventional, old English boarding school where he attempts to teach form Lower 5b following the sudden death of Pelham, Ebony’s predecessor. Ebony is accompanied by another unsympathetic female character - his highly critical young wife, Nadia, who is not only appalled by the apartment, by the noisy railway line, but also by her husband’s choice of career. Cooper’s script captures the word play between the boys (or “men” as they insist on being called) and their new, hesitant teacher and as result this is a very naturalistic record of the boarding school world, with an unpleasant twist. When Ebony tries to discipline his students he learns the truth about Pelham:</p>
<p>EBONY: Stop! (Silence) Very well. You have had your warning. The form will stay in this afternoon from half-past two until I am satisfied with your behaviour.</p>
<p>CLOISTERMOUTH: It’s not a good idea, sir.</p>
<p>EBONY: No, Cloistermouth? Tell me why not?</p>
<p>CLOISTERMOUTH: Well sir, Mr Pelham did it once.</p>
<p>CUTHBUN: The week before last, sir.</p>
<p>CLOISTERMOUTH: And that was why we killed him. (Dead silence).</p>
<p>Clearly, Unman, Wittering and Zigo is influenced by Golding’s Lord of the Flies, adapted by Cooper just three years earlier. Golding’s novel is also about the brutality and violence of uncontrolled adolescent boys and the cruel bullying of one individual; in Lord of the Flies, Piggy is murdered and in Cooper’s play the target of merciless bullying, Wittering takes his own life. </p>
<p>Giles Cooper’s contribution to radio drama was substantial and he probably did more than any other playwright to establish drama written specifically for radio. Before he became a regular writer of radio dramas in the mid 1950s most plays heard on radio were adaptations of stage plays or novels. With Mathry Beacon, and then with a series of other highly successful plays written for radio, Cooper helped establish drama written for radio. He achieved this by writing plays which worked better on radio than anywhere else, that were, in other words, “radiogenic”. Of course it was the case that other writers, including Samuel Beckett, Louis MacNeice and Harold Pinter, also wrote successful, radiogenic drama but it was the sheer volume and diversity of Cooper’s output that made him so influential.</p>
<p>Using BBC Genome it is easy to see what happened to Cooper in the late 1950s, he became the main script writer for the BBC’s television series, Maigret. This major undertaking involved adapting over 20 episodes, all 50 minutes long. His television career blossomed in the 1960s but tragically in 1966 he fell from a train and died at the age of 48. Cooper’s contribution was recognised by an award in his name, celebrating the best in BBC radio drama, held annually from 1978 until the early 1990s. He left behind an extraordinary legacy, which Genome has done much to reveal.</p></div>
2018-07-30T13:04:50+01:002018-07-30T13:04:50+01:00http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/genome/entries/002bbb66-8dc2-4c1a-99b1-3ac538160322Andrew Martin <div class="component"> <img src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p06g3yzc.jpg" class="rsp-img" alt=""data-img-src-68="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/160xn/p06g3yzc.jpg" data-img-src-176="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/192xn/p06g3yzc.jpg" data-img-src-208="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/256xn/p06g3yzc.jpg" data-img-src-304="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/336xn/p06g3yzc.jpg" data-img-src-440="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/480xn/p06g3yzc.jpg" data-img-src-576="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p06g3yzc.jpg" ><p><em>The cast of Dad's Army, pictured in 1973 - back row l-r Arnold Ridley, James Beck, John Laurie, Ian Lavender; front row l-r Clive Dunn, Arthur Lowe and John Le Mesurier</em></p> </div> <div class="component prose"><p>The first episode of <a title="Dad's Army" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/a91b9e0900614439813f55db136c7ff2" target="_blank">Dad's Army</a> was shown 50 years ago, on Wednesday 31 July 1968. The Radio Times billing for the new series said: "It’s back to the 1940 days of gas masks, sandbags, and tin hats for this new comedy series about the Home Guard. The cast includes Arthur Lowe and John Le Mesurier." The series was also given a full page article detailing its concept, and the background on its three main stars, Lowe, Le Mesurier and Clive Dunn.</p>
<p>Dad’s Army’s ubiquitous presence on our screens – there has only been one year since the series ended in <a title="1977" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/92dd0fdf582d4ca28343674f72b0b0dc" target="_blank">1977</a> when at least one episode has not been shown (1987, since you ask) – means that it has become embedded in the culture of the United Kingdom. It could be argued that there’s nothing to say about Dad’s Army that hasn’t been said already – but it would be invidious to allow the 50th anniversary of the first episode to go by without us marking the occasion in a suitably Genome manner…</p>
<p>Dad’s Army was the first joint venture of writing team Jimmy Perry and David Croft, and it was to be followed by a string of other successful <a title="collaborations" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/1f95dddea42c45b78d21971dddc2d1ce" target="_blank">collaborations</a>. Perry was an actor who ran a repertory company for many years after World War Two (during which he had been in the Home Guard and run a concert party in India; afterwards he would become a <a title="holiday camp entertainer" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/9792469253cd49c4aae8ab98cc2658bd" target="_blank">holiday camp entertainer</a> – experiences he put to good use in his writing career). He had then broken into television in a small way, including playing parts in sitcoms produced by <a title="David Croft" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/855463dcf7a24e8e89f485a218f5a1eb" target="_blank">David Croft</a>.</p></div> <div class="component"> <img src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p06g40jt.jpg" class="rsp-img" alt=""data-img-src-68="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/160xn/p06g40jt.jpg" data-img-src-176="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/192xn/p06g40jt.jpg" data-img-src-208="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/256xn/p06g40jt.jpg" data-img-src-304="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/336xn/p06g40jt.jpg" data-img-src-440="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/480xn/p06g40jt.jpg" data-img-src-576="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p06g40jt.jpg" ><p><em>John Le Mesurier, Arthur Lowe and Clive Dunn in a scene from the first episode of Dad's Army, The Man and the Hour. Series 1 and 2 of the sitcom were recorded in black and white</em></p> </div> <div class="component prose"><p>Most of the cast of Dad’s Army were seasoned troupers, with decades of experience. Arthur Lowe, who played Captain George Mainwaring, the commander of the Walmington-on-Sea Home Guard, became an actor after World War Two. His first BBC job was in a Third Programme play, <a title="The Fool's Saga" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/013ecc7e3c8740e8addc98d74877eb0a" target="_blank">The Fool’s Saga</a>, in 1949, and he first appeared on television in 1951 in a play, <a title="To Live in Peace" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/4e1a4590c4344f36800b40a2efbca93c" target="_blank">To Live in Peace</a>, set in Italy.</p>
<p>Lowe made frequent BBC appearances through the 1950s and early 1960s, including the TV play <a title="So Many Children" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/5855d8f4dec1499d80cd81d772d55f85" target="_blank">So Many Children</a> (alongside Thora Hird and a young Michael Caine), <a title="Maigret" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/b251898a9297403abff286b5b0136b61" target="_blank">Maigret</a> and <a title="Z Cars" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/5835e7977df64a1e9b99280f0978c976" target="_blank">Z Cars</a>, as well as continuing to take part in radio plays. By then he had become a regular in Coronation Street, as Leonard Swindley, a lay preacher and manager of a clothing shop. Lowe appeared in the soap from its early days in 1960, until 1965, when, unusually, his character was put into two spin-off comedy series, Pardon the Expression and its sequel Turn Out the Lights. But Captain Mainwaring gave Lowe a second bite at fame, and became his greatest creation. Lowe has a brilliant line in physical comedy, delivers his lines with impeccable timing, and he brings a rare depth to a sitcom character.</p>
<p>Three of the stars of Dad’s Army – John Le Mesurier, <a title="John Laurie" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/89fab718284f49ee90dc8493f0abc73b" target="_blank">John Laurie</a> and Arnold Ridley – actually had television experience dating back to the 1930s. The first two had acted (on one occasion Le Mesurier also stood in as the television announcer when the scheduled announcer fell ill), while Ridley was interviewed about his writing career. Arnold Ridley was then best known for the play <a title="The Ghost Train" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/81ef4dfb8e984eeb8e18e738cf960df0" target="_blank">The Ghost Train</a>, but he later lost a great deal of money investing in one of his own plays. By the 1960s he was a jobbing actor, for example as <a title="Doughy Hood" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/35b6dc7db226468ca250547c94c4aaf1" target="_blank">Doughy Hood</a> in The Archers. Ridley’s character Private Charles Godfrey is remembered for needing to "be excused" regularly, for infallible politeness mixed with vagueness, and for his <a title="two sisters" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/c01fa7541f9f495aa83ef0256be6af40" target="_blank">two sisters</a> with whom he lived.</p></div> <div class="component"> <img src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p06g40nf.jpg" class="rsp-img" alt=""data-img-src-68="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/160xn/p06g40nf.jpg" data-img-src-176="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/192xn/p06g40nf.jpg" data-img-src-208="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/256xn/p06g40nf.jpg" data-img-src-304="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/336xn/p06g40nf.jpg" data-img-src-440="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/480xn/p06g40nf.jpg" data-img-src-576="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p06g40nf.jpg" ><p><em>Perhaps the most famous episode was The Deadly Attachment from 1973 - in this rehearsal shot, Arthur Lowe has his natural hair colouring, before make-up was applied</em></p> </div> <div class="component prose"><p><a title="John Le Mesurier" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/804253b5852b43b38e4171b34bc2a906" target="_blank">John Le Mesurier</a> was an established character actor by the late 1960s, appearing in straight plays as well as comedies, including <a title="Hancock's Half-Hour" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/3d0f7d7fbfa54b32969f2a7b16669e38" target="_blank">Hancock’s Half-Hour</a>, and the ITV sitcom George and the Dragon with Sid James and Peggy Mount. He and Clive Dunn were old friends – they had appeared in BBC television children’s series <a title="Happy Holidays" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/d55acd2f945845bdb99b2808f7649a7c" target="_blank">Happy Holidays</a> in 1954, alongside Le Mesurier’s then-wife Hattie Jacques – and they each agreed to take part in Dad’s Army if the other did.</p>
<p>Clive Dunn began acting while he was a prisoner-of-war during World War Two, and started making <a title="radio" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/3092513238a4483e8438773f7c7630f5" target="_blank">radio</a> and <a title="television" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/6f3f99b091274bf485aaafaf9bd38d6c" target="_blank">television</a> appearances soon after the war ended. He was a comedian and actor, and like John Le Mesurier often appeared in children’s programmes. These included <a title="The Adventures of Charlie Quick" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/c9ab2c5c9d8845fdb5dd8e0ec4209478" target="_blank">The Adventures of Charlie Quick</a> – a character name he would re-use in his later series Grandad. He worked with Michael Bentine on radio in <a title="Round the Bend" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/8152f0cedcbe4284841e57463df2f98f" target="_blank">Round the Bend</a> and on television in <a title="It's a Square World" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/818ec64d7cb544f98e552d1986cdaa0d" target="_blank">It’s a Square World</a>, and had regular roles in ITV sitcom Bootsie and Snudge and BBC Two's <a title="The World of Beachcomber" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/82fb61e49d744ebc8306fefa6ffc1a49" target="_blank">The World of Beachcomber</a>. Though he specialised in older characters, Dunn was one of the younger regulars in Dad’s Army, and was thus able to perform Corporal Jones' frequent stunt sequences.</p>
<p>John Laurie can perhaps boast the earliest credit in Genome of any Dad’s Army cast member, as he took part in a radio programme reading poems by <a title="Robert Burns" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/14c8c8032b7a4fe190426b57d8e1cf0d" target="_blank">Robert Burns</a> in 1926. His distinctive features were seen in the Hitchcock film of <a title="The Thirty-Nine Steps" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/ede46c7be33646299e4d8945ef12b910" target="_blank">The Thirty-Nine Steps</a> and Laurence Olivier’s <a title="Henry V" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/95f2dd8bea9948269d2f7bfc78999d4c" target="_blank">Henry V</a>. He was well known for his Shakespearean performances and verse readings, and turned up regularly on radio, television, theatre and film. Like Jimmy Perry, Laurie had served in the Home Guard, but had also seen active service in the First World War. His Dad’s Army character, Private James Frazer, is usually portrayed as Walmington-on-Sea’s undertaker, though in the first episode of the show he is said to run a philatelist’s shop (but then philately will get you nowhere…)</p></div> <div class="component"> <img src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p06g40vz.jpg" class="rsp-img" alt=""data-img-src-68="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/160xn/p06g40vz.jpg" data-img-src-176="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/192xn/p06g40vz.jpg" data-img-src-208="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/256xn/p06g40vz.jpg" data-img-src-304="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/336xn/p06g40vz.jpg" data-img-src-440="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/480xn/p06g40vz.jpg" data-img-src-576="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p06g40vz.jpg" ><p><em>Other regular cast members included Edward Sinclair as the Verger, Bill Pertwee as Chief Warden Hodges, and Frank Williams as the Vicar</em></p> </div> <div class="component prose"><p>The platoon’s spiv character, <a title="Joe Walker" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/bd8aa40842474e13989f258f429d538b" target="_blank">Joe Walker</a>, was a role that Jimmy Perry had originally designed for himself, but David Croft persuaded him that it would be more diplomatic for someone else to play the part, so he couldn’t be accused of giving himself all the best lines. <a title="James Beck" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/3e301a9d8a4b4f5a971b9da98b4fc5b7" target="_blank">James Beck</a> was cast in the role, but he would sadly die during the making of the 1973 series, though he is seen in every episode, thanks to the end credits. These were shot during the making of the 1969 episode <a title="Battle School" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/868692406ba946edb966bf03bde329a3" target="_blank">Battle School</a>, and show the whole platoon advancing over a training ground (filmed at an actual army training area near Thetford in Norfolk). Jimmy Perry did make one cameo appearance in Dad’s Army, as a music-hall comedian in the <a title="last episode of the first series" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/3c7bfa1a34654d91aa93c8b38bc7481b" target="_blank">last episode of the first series</a>.</p>
<p>Frank Pike, played by Ian Lavender, was based on Perry’s own age when he was a member of the Home Guard, although the characterisation was an exaggerated "mother’s boy" - his mother, Mavis Pike, was played by Janet Davies. Pike was also an important part of the back story of <a title="Sergeant Wilson" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/59db37d507e44dba9c12fb5ccff874db" target="_blank">Sergeant Wilson</a>, whom Pike calls "Uncle Arthur". Although it was never explicitly stated in the programme, it was implied, and Croft and Perry later confirmed, that Wilson was Pike’s father, and Wilson, Pike and Mrs Pike constituted an effective family unit – the only one seen in the programme.</p>
<p>Casting is one of the dark arts of comedy, and things could have been very different with some of the other actors considered for these roles. For example, <a title="Jon Pertwee" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/a9d36aa9c72f4c6eb4d9a2daa7e2043e" target="_blank">Jon Pertwee</a> was approached to play Mainwaring – as it transpired the only Pertwee in the series was Jon’s cousin <a title="Bill Pertwee" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/a2a7fdcd258444a28b74155e86f17a9c" target="_blank">Bill Pertwee</a>, who played ARP Warden Hodges. Similarly, <a title="David Jason" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/8f5da31ea4554b3ba423a4356de94566" target="_blank">David Jason</a> was one possible choice to play Jones - like Clive Dunn he was adept at "old man" characters, like the old prisoner Blanco he played in <a title="Porridge" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/290ec11253d04b9c977e7df52ac799c3" target="_blank">Porridge</a>.</p>
<p>Dad’s Army has a very British style of humour: it can feature slapstick one minute and subtle character comedy the next; it has an unrivalled roster of catchphrases, although they do not seem imposed on the characters but happen naturally. It is also a programme that is suitable for family viewing without being anodyne, and at the heart of it there is the superb comic technique and timing of a cast which managed to be the right people in the right place at the right time to create a comedy classic.</p></div>
2018-07-25T10:30:00+01:002018-07-25T10:30:00+01:00http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/genome/entries/3748283f-e95c-4b1f-ab3d-c4c45df87a09Marsha Dunstan <div class="component"> <img src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p06cp103.jpg" class="rsp-img" alt=""data-img-src-68="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/160xn/p06cp103.jpg" data-img-src-176="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/192xn/p06cp103.jpg" data-img-src-208="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/256xn/p06cp103.jpg" data-img-src-304="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/336xn/p06cp103.jpg" data-img-src-440="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/480xn/p06cp103.jpg" data-img-src-576="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p06cp103.jpg" ><p><em>Angela Down (left) as Sylvia Pankhurst and Sian Phillips (right) as Emmeline Pankhurst in 1974 costume drama Shoulder to Shoulder</em></p> </div> <div class="component prose"><p><strong>There are now more than 7,000 links in BBC Genome to the World Service archive. Here is a selection of some of our favourites, profiling important figures from history.</strong></p></div> <div class="component prose"><p>As we have continued to sift through the thousands of programmes in the World Service Archive to identify more recordings that can be linked to listings in BBC Genome, the range of programmes continues to amaze. As cataloguers, we work in a more or less orderly fashion, navigating an alphabetical list or along a timeline. As listeners, however, we are like radio magpies, attracted by a particular programme, which on listening reminds you of something else. Soon you are happily ricocheting around the archive, finding new programmes you never knew existed. </p></div> <div class="component prose"><p>So, in this spirit, we offer a “playlist” of individuals whose lives and works feature in the World Service archive. </p></div> <div class="component prose"><p>One hundred years ago, a lot of British women got the vote, thanks to campaigners and suffragettes like <strong>Sylvia Pankhurst</strong> (1882-1960), featured <a title="omnibus" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/260a11811e9f08132c6434e0817d265d" target="_blank">in this Omnibus</a>. Photography may show us what someone looked like but hearing their voice is momentarily to feel their presence. Listening to an early recording of her speaking about the origin of her mother Emmeline Pankhurst’s call to arms – “They must do us justice or do us violence!” – was quite thrilling. However, it’s what Pankhurst did next that is the real subject of the programme, as the defence of Ethiopia’s independence against the fascist advances of Italy became the focus of her activism. After 19 years of producing the New Times and Ethiopian News in London, the radical feminist and socialist, ended her days in a house given to her by the Emperor Haile Selassie in Addis Adaba, where, in 1960, she was given a state funeral.</p></div> <div class="component"> <img src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p06cnqq8.jpg" class="rsp-img" alt=""data-img-src-68="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/160xn/p06cnqq8.jpg" data-img-src-176="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/192xn/p06cnqq8.jpg" data-img-src-208="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/256xn/p06cnqq8.jpg" data-img-src-304="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/336xn/p06cnqq8.jpg" data-img-src-440="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/480xn/p06cnqq8.jpg" data-img-src-576="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p06cnqq8.jpg" > </div> <div class="component prose"><p>Appetite whetted, I put her name into the iPlayer radio search box and found <a title="sylvia P" href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09qcfh5" target="_blank"><strong>Sylvia Pankhurst: Honorary Ethiopian</strong></a>, which was broadcast on Radio 4 earlier this year (and so is not yet in Genome). It’s presented by her granddaughter, Helen Sylvia Pankhurst, who grew up in Addis Ababa and still sleeps in the room that was her grandmother’s. Much of Helen’s own working life has centred on Sylvia’s twin passions of women’s rights and Ethiopia. A fascinating example of how ideals and consequences can cascade down the generations.</p></div> <div class="component prose"><p>Another generation, another country, another woman on a mission: American philosopher, writer and director <strong>Susan Sontag</strong> (1933-2004) staged Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett in Sarajevo in 1993, during the 1,425-day siege of the city. In an <a title="meridian" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/9eb587e88ff65987269de124fbf009cb" target="_blank">episode of Meridian</a> broadcast the following year, Sontag gradually brings life behind (and between) the lines into sharp focus and stands witness for those living under siege. And she makes the case for arts in times of conflict: “Culture – serious culture from anywhere – is an expression of human dignity, which is what people in Sarajevo feel they have lost.”</p></div> <div class="component"> <img src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p06cp1dq.jpg" class="rsp-img" alt=""data-img-src-68="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/160xn/p06cp1dq.jpg" data-img-src-176="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/192xn/p06cp1dq.jpg" data-img-src-208="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/256xn/p06cp1dq.jpg" data-img-src-304="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/336xn/p06cp1dq.jpg" data-img-src-440="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/480xn/p06cp1dq.jpg" data-img-src-576="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p06cp1dq.jpg" ><p><em>Journalist Allan Little pictured in 2007.</em></p> </div> <div class="component prose"><p>Once again, an iPlayer search turns up a complementary programme: <a title="godot in S" href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04dqlc3" target="_blank">Still Waiting for Godot in Sarajevo?</a> BBC correspondent Alan Little had been in the audience of that original production and here he returns to the city 20 years later. Where in the scale of human needs do the arts come, he asks theatre director Haris Pasovic, who had invited Sontag to the besieged city. “The most important thing in war is not to survive. The most important thing today is to remain human … That is why art has been a primary need as much as food and sex and water.” Little wonder then that in the intervening years, the epithet “legendary” has attached itself to Sontag’s Godot.</p></div> <div class="component"> <img src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p06cnrmg.jpg" class="rsp-img" alt=""data-img-src-68="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/160xn/p06cnrmg.jpg" data-img-src-176="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/192xn/p06cnrmg.jpg" data-img-src-208="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/256xn/p06cnrmg.jpg" data-img-src-304="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/336xn/p06cnrmg.jpg" data-img-src-440="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/480xn/p06cnrmg.jpg" data-img-src-576="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p06cnrmg.jpg" ><p><em>Acacia trees growing on the grasslands of Amboseli National Park in Kenya, overlooked by Mount Kilimanjaro.</em></p> </div> <div class="component prose"><p>As the first environmentalist and the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize, Kenyan Wangari Maathai (1940-2011) also helped people meet their primary needs. Maathai was the founder of the Green Belt Movement, a tree-planting campaign aimed at helping and empowering the poorest people in rural communities. Environmental devastation, particularly deforestation, she said, is interlinked with poverty, the political climate interacting with the physical environment. Here, in one of the <strong><a title="world lectures" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/9bb0852066ca0211d96fb90827c89270" target="_blank">World Lectures</a></strong> series from 1998, she talks about her research into rural poverty and how it shaped her ideas of what people can do for themselves. “Everyone can plant a tree.” And not any tree, either. Maathai advocates the planting of indigenous trees to preserve Africa’s biodiversity at a time when she said big agrichemical companies were taking control of more crops. “I am against the patenting of life.”</p></div> <div class="component prose"><p>Another Nobel laureate who believed in preserving our genetic heritage for everyone was the late Sir John Sulston (1942-2018), interviewed in <a title="agenda" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/96a2b2575e73c6cf96b11a09bd0c0478" target="_blank">2002 on Agenda</a>. Officially, he was awarded his Nobel Prize for work on a thousand-celled worm but he really will be remembered as the man who kept the human genome in the public domain. “I could not understand, in my heart, how anybody on earth would actually say they should privatise the human genome… I thought it was absolutely despicable and therefore it became a moral thing. But still the pragmatic view was there as well: that we’d get more medicine, faster, if everybody worked on the data.” His account of the race with venture capitalists who wanted to sequence and patent human genes makes for gripping and salutary listening. What might have happened had his team lost?</p></div>
2018-06-13T17:30:20+01:002018-06-13T17:30:20+01:00http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/genome/entries/f259f58a-7954-447e-9e6b-22f3f742ad07Simon Mahon <div class="component"> <img src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p06b1vms.jpg" class="rsp-img" alt=""data-img-src-68="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/160xn/p06b1vms.jpg" data-img-src-176="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/192xn/p06b1vms.jpg" data-img-src-208="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/256xn/p06b1vms.jpg" data-img-src-304="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/336xn/p06b1vms.jpg" data-img-src-440="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/480xn/p06b1vms.jpg" data-img-src-576="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p06b1vms.jpg" ><p><em>Kenneth Wolstenholme presenting coverage of West Ham United v Sheffield United in 1966</em></p> </div> <div class="component prose"><p><strong>More than 20 million UK viewers tuned in to watch the final of the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil. In stark contrast there is barely a trace of the early World Cups in BBC Genome's television and radio listings.</strong></p></div> <div class="component prose"><p>The first football World Cup was held in 1930. It was a humble affair, which didn’t get an outing on radio or TV in the UK. Scotland and England were invited but did not accept; a Radio Times article previewing the 1954 tournament suggested this was because they did not believe the opposition sides were good enough. After follow-up tournaments in 1934 and 1938, the contest was abandoned during World War Two.</p></div> <div class="component prose"><p>The 1950 World Cup was held in Brazil and England participated for the first time. It was still a <a title="1950 World Cup" href="https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2010/may/21/joy-of-six-world-cup" target="_blank">fairly amateur operation</a>. Italy travelled to the tournament by boat, but the two-week voyage wasn’t particularly conducive to maintaining athletic fitness. Out of condition, they immediately lost their first game to Sweden and were effectively out of the tournament.</p></div> <div class="component prose"><p>Coverage was very limited and the front page of Radio Times that week focused on tennis, with no mention of the tournament. Sporadic <a title="5min report" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/schedules/light/1950-06-25#at-22.15" target="_blank">five-minute reports</a> from games was all that was available on radio. Competing in their first World Cup, England had the nickname “Kings of Football” and were one of the favourites, having beaten Portugal 10–0 in Lisbon two weeks before the tournament. However, they were knocked out in the first round group stage, thanks to a 1-0 loss against a semi-professional US side, in one of the <a title="US beat England " href="http://en.espn.co.uk/football/sport/story/27321.html" target="_blank">biggest shocks</a> in the tournament's history.</p></div> <div class="component"> <img src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p06b1mtk.jpg" class="rsp-img" alt=""data-img-src-68="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/160xn/p06b1mtk.jpg" data-img-src-176="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/192xn/p06b1mtk.jpg" data-img-src-208="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/256xn/p06b1mtk.jpg" data-img-src-304="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/336xn/p06b1mtk.jpg" data-img-src-440="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/480xn/p06b1mtk.jpg" data-img-src-576="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p06b1mtk.jpg" ><p><em>Kenneth Wolstenholme's Radio Times article ahead of the 1962 World Cup</em></p> </div> <div class="component prose"><p>Held in Switzerland, the 1954 tournament saw <a title="live" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/584d8b32f4de4870a288005a92e58971" target="_blank">live World Cup</a> television coverage on the BBC for the first time via the recently installed Eurovision network, which allowed television signals to be relayed across Europe. This only worked for tournaments held in Europe, however, and ahead of the 1962 tournament BBC reporter Kenneth Wolstenholme wrote a Radio Times article about the difficulties of broadcasting matches from Chile and the aspiration to get them to air within 48 hours of the match concluding.</p></div> <div class="component prose"><p>Four years later, Wolstenholme and fellow commentator Brian Moore wrote a seven-page preview of the major sides before the 1966 tournament hosted in England. Later on in the edition, an article previewing the comprehensive BBC reporting of the upcoming tournament stated: “A feast of soccer on television is offered to BBC-1 viewers during the World Cup,” and promised more than 50 hours of coverage. England went on to win the tournament, with Wolstenholme providing one of the most famous moments in the history of sports broadcasting with his commentary on the<a title="they think its all over" href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/44275284" target="_blank"> final England goal</a>.</p></div> <div class="component prose"><p>England’s World Cup win earlier in the day dominated the news report that evening but it was a good day to bury bad news with the script showing that the second story on the Home Service <a title="6pm news " href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/schedules/bbchomeservice/basic/1966-07-30#at-18.00" target="_blank">6.00pm bulletin</a> that evening was a report about the government freezing wages.</p></div> <div class="component"> <img src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p06b1lsb.jpg" class="rsp-img" alt=""data-img-src-68="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/160xn/p06b1lsb.jpg" data-img-src-176="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/192xn/p06b1lsb.jpg" data-img-src-208="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/256xn/p06b1lsb.jpg" data-img-src-304="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/336xn/p06b1lsb.jpg" data-img-src-440="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/480xn/p06b1lsb.jpg" data-img-src-576="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p06b1lsb.jpg" > </div> <div class="component prose"><p>Although many people were still watching in black and white, the <a title="1970 World Cup" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/ad11fc5d34254a0690ee06657bdede01" target="_blank">1970 World Cup</a> was the first to be broadcast on colour television and you can watch Carlos Alberto’s famous goal as Brazil beat Italy <a title="1970 goals " href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/25191001" target="_blank">in the final here</a>. It was also the last World Cup to feature Pele, celebrated as one of the greatest players of all time. The Brazilian features in numerous BBC Genome listings and his “extraordinary life” was the subject of a BBC Two <a title="profile of pele" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/6b1350daa07f42e7986e72502ea6317b" target="_blank">programme</a> in 2002.</p></div> <div class="component prose"><p>Scotland have played in eight World Cups and, although they have never progressed beyond the first round, one of their greatest World Cup moments was captured <a title="scotland listing" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/d30575872a1a498bba3040d724dea94d" target="_blank">on BBC television</a> in 1978 when they beat Holland with a superb goal from Archie Gemmill, described by commentator David Coleman <a title="Archie Gemmill" href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/43966544" target="_blank">here</a>.</p></div> <div class="component prose"><p>Coverage of the World Cup is on the government mandated "protected" list, meaning it must be shown on free-to-air terrestrial television. Throughout most of the competition’s history, BBC and ITV have jointly covered the tournament on UK television but the unpredictable nature of the competition means the allocation of matches happens at short notice. This can be a problem for Radio Times, which has to print the broadcasters’ alternative TV schedules for match days.</p>
<p>The BBC didn’t show England’s 1998 second-round match against Argentina, so instead broadcast their <a title="read steady cook" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/schedules/bbcone/london/1998-06-30#at-19.30" target="_blank">back-up schedule</a> including Celebrity Ready, Steady, Cook and One Foot in the Grave. The football fans were more likely than Victor Meldrew to be exclaiming disbelief that night. A red card for David Beckham and a missed penalty from David Batty saw England get knocked out and a certain eight-year-old boy cry himself to sleep.</p></div> <div class="component prose"><p>World Cup coverage in the 21st Century has seen more technological breakthroughs, with <a title="2006 tournament " href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/ea68cf50058646b9a4548be1b02bd950" target="_blank">the 2006 tournament</a> shown in high-definition for the first time, a decision Ofcom credited with giving <a title="ofcom sales " href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2010/jun/10/world-cup-hd-tv-sales" target="_blank">a significant boost</a> to the sales of HD-ready TV sets. There has also been an increase in the coverage of women’s football on television; in 2007 the BBC broadcast the <a title="women world cup" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/59f205bcaa2544b7af4c5d621d297a7e" target="_blank">Women’s World Cup</a> with Gabby Logan presenting all England games live.</p></div> <div class="component"> <img src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p06b29hj.jpg" class="rsp-img" alt=""data-img-src-68="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/160xn/p06b29hj.jpg" data-img-src-176="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/192xn/p06b29hj.jpg" data-img-src-208="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/256xn/p06b29hj.jpg" data-img-src-304="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/336xn/p06b29hj.jpg" data-img-src-440="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/480xn/p06b29hj.jpg" data-img-src-576="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p06b29hj.jpg" ><p><em>Gabby Logan presented BBC coverage of the 2007 Women's World Cup</em></p> </div> <div class="component prose"><p>Coverage continues to evolve. The 2018 tournament sees fans able to watch in Ultra HD and <a title="vr new " href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/44305845" target="_blank">virtual reality</a> for the first time, through the BBC Sport's VR 2018 World Cup app - an even more interactive way for viewers to enjoy the euphoria or heartbreak of a penalty shoot-out. There's a lot to look forward to over the next month.</p></div>
2018-05-14T16:55:58+01:002018-05-14T16:55:58+01:00http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/genome/entries/40441084-2659-4e02-a38d-a7a732b2bbe2Andrew Martin <div class="component"> <img src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p06759r4.jpg" class="rsp-img" alt=""data-img-src-68="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/160xn/p06759r4.jpg" data-img-src-176="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/192xn/p06759r4.jpg" data-img-src-208="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/256xn/p06759r4.jpg" data-img-src-304="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/336xn/p06759r4.jpg" data-img-src-440="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/480xn/p06759r4.jpg" data-img-src-576="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p06759r4.jpg" ><p><em>Savoy Hill, the BBC's headquarters from 1923 to 1932</em></p> </div> <div class="component prose"><p>Today the main home and headquarters of the BBC is Broadcasting House on Portland Place, at the top of Regent Street in the West End of London. The BBC formally moved into that building on 15 May 1932, but for the preceding nine years, its London base had been a couple of miles away at Savoy Hill, on the north bank of the Thames between Waterloo and Hungerford Bridges.</p>
<p>Unlike Broadcasting House, the building known as Savoy Hill was not purpose-built for making radio programmes. It was the headquarters of the <a title="Institute of Electrical Engineers" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/6aebc3e74d0d4a33a22067b77ad02371" target="_blank">Institute of Electrical Engineers</a>, a logical enough connection for providing house room to the fledgling BBC. And it was here that all but the very earliest foundations of the BBC were laid, and many of the early innovations of broadcasting took place.</p>
<p>Broadcasting in Britain began in a somewhat ad hoc fashion. In the 1920s various companies were manufacturing radio transmission and reception equipment, and at first, the engineers at the various companies doubled as broadcasters in the very brief test programmes. The Postmaster General, whose remit covered all kinds of communications, decided that things needed to be put on a formal basis. Thus the British Broadcasting Company was formed in 1922, to provide the programmes to fill the airwaves, and linking together the companies transmitting in the major cities of the United Kingdom. London was chosen to be the hub of broadcasting, even though it was not immediately easy to share programmes until more powerful transmitters were provided, though they could be relayed by Post Office landline between transmitter sites.</p>
<p>The Marconi Company, based in the Strand, had been transmitting experimentally since May 1922 using the call sign 2LO, and this continued from 2 November when the BBC was officially founded. When John Reith was appointed General Manager of the BBC in December 1922, its staff consisted of four people. By the time the BBC moved to Savoy Hill a few months later there were about 30, and as broadcasting took off, more and more personnel were appointed to cope with ever-greater hours of broadcasting, more complex production, and all the backroom activities required to support programme-making.</p></div> <div class="component"> <img src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p0675b55.jpg" class="rsp-img" alt=""data-img-src-68="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/160xn/p0675b55.jpg" data-img-src-176="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/192xn/p0675b55.jpg" data-img-src-208="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/256xn/p0675b55.jpg" data-img-src-304="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/336xn/p0675b55.jpg" data-img-src-440="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/480xn/p0675b55.jpg" data-img-src-576="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p0675b55.jpg" ><p><em>Studio 1 at Savoy Hill after it had been remodelled in 1928</em></p> </div> <div class="component prose"><p>Reith himself, and colleagues <a title="Arthur Burrows" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/1bc7104bf309480b92643d41a458b605" target="_blank">Arthur Burrows</a> and <a title="Cecil Lewis" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/1b489daef0fa40dfb21ed5d64ba36587" target="_blank">Cecil Lewis</a>, all wrote accounts of the early days in 1924, and it says something about importance of radio and its adoption throughout the country, that they put their thoughts in print at so early a stage. While Reith’s “Broadcast Over Britain” is more concerned with philosophical mission statements about the purpose of broadcasting, Burrows’ “The Story of Broadcasting” and Lewis’s “Broadcasting from Within” describe the chronology of events with the technical development of broadcasting and the establishment of the BBC itself.</p>
<p>The rapidly-expanding BBC moved into part of the IEE building on Savoy Hill in March 1923, but it encroached on ever greater parts of the building and by the middle of the following year its operations required it to take over the adjoining Savoy Hill Mansions. Even this soon became inadequate for the BBC’s requirements, and over the succeeding years staff were scattered into assorted buildings nearby: it was not until the opening of Broadcasting House that most were gathered together again in one place.</p>
<p>The 2LO transmitter, originally relatively low-powered and not reaching much beyond London, was upgraded in 1925, with twice the power, and relocated to the roof of Selfridge’s department store on Oxford Street. At the end of <a title="1924" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/schedules/5xx/1924-12-15" target="_blank">1924</a> a high-powered long wave transmitter based at Daventry, call sign 5XX, was established to relay broadcasts to most of the United Kingdom. The establishment of Daventry meant that the London programme would increasingly dominate the output of the BBC. The transmitter on top of Selfridges was replaced by masts at <a title="Brookmans Park" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/ab42ccfcaadc4e76bd4fcaaf06e9151d" target="_blank">Brookmans Park</a> in October 1929, and it was soon after possible to provide a second BBC network.</p>
<p>During this period, the range of programming provided by the BBC consisted of music of various kinds, talks, drama and readings of literature and poetry. Outside broadcasts were a relatively early innovation, mostly consisting of concert performances. It would be the late 1920s before sporting events started to be covered live, though <a title="descriptions" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/59566f66c00541fe8f1ba6b642f9cbf7" target="_blank">descriptions</a> of them had already happened, in the manner of newspaper sports reporting. Until the 1930s most output came from a single Productions Department, and producers were not divided by genre, though naturally some favoured and were better at different kinds of programme than others.</p>
<p>Early programmes included <a title="Children's Hour" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/86c9e9398d2a472490d845e74867b93f" target="_blank">Children’s Hour</a> – which included many regional contributions, and at first went under a variety of different names. There was also a Women’s Hour – not to be confused with the post-war programme Woman’s Hour which continues to this day. Dance music was provided by regular late-night broadcasts by the Savoy Orpheans from the nearby Savoy Hotel, as well as by studio groups. Personalities emerged like storyteller <a title="A.J. Alan" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/9e1ee95f52f043f688f18431db579145" target="_blank">A.J. Alan</a>, and the first radio comedian John Henry. There were already programmes consisting of gramophone records, decades before the advent of Radio 1. <a title="Christopher Stone" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/73bef451e354447da83bc1805ce9dee5" target="_blank">Christopher Stone</a>, who became known as the first regular Disc Jockey, was first billed in Radio Times in 1927.</p></div> <div class="component"> <img src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p0675ch7.jpg" class="rsp-img" alt=""data-img-src-68="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/160xn/p0675ch7.jpg" data-img-src-176="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/192xn/p0675ch7.jpg" data-img-src-208="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/256xn/p0675ch7.jpg" data-img-src-304="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/336xn/p0675ch7.jpg" data-img-src-440="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/480xn/p0675ch7.jpg" data-img-src-576="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p0675ch7.jpg" ><p><em>BBC Director General John Reith hands the key of Savoy Hill back to the commissionaire on 14 May 1932</em></p> </div> <div class="component prose"><p>During the 1920s the BBC established itself as a news provider, even though it was reliant on outside agencies for newsgathering. During the General Strike in 1926 it was virtually the only source of news, other than the government’s British Gazette. A government enquiry before the strike had already concluded that broadcasting should be taken out the hands of the privately owned Company and be established as a public corporation. John Reith, by then Managing Director, was appointed Director General of the British Broadcasting Corporation, and all BBC staff and assets were transferred to the Corporation on 1 January 1927.</p>
<p>By the turn of the 1930s discussions were underway to establish an international arm of the BBC to reach, initially, the outposts of the British Empire, but this would not come to pass until the end of 1932. At the same time, the BBC was rather less enthusiastic about the <a title="television experiments" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/1f054f8e6830404e9a1d5c020720c6ac" target="_blank">television experiments</a> of John Logie Baird, although by the end of 1929 they allowed him to use the BBC transmitter for experimental programmes, though Baird had to produce his programmes from his own premises, as there was no room at Savoy Hill.</p>
<p>By the time the Corporation was established it was clear that the BBC had more than outgrown the confines of Savoy Hill, and it was decided that a purpose built headquarters was required. A plot of land on Portland Place was acquired in early 1928, next to the church, All Souls, Langham Place, and the concert venue Queen’s Hall, both of which would prove useful in presenting programmes. By late 1931 the new building was ready to receive the first staff members, and the main move to Broadcasting House was over several weekends in April 1932. Finally, on 14 May, the <a title="last programme" href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/a436f200bef849dfb8dc4ba60fcc9810" target="_blank">last programme</a> was broadcast from the BBC's first real home: a new era had begun.</p></div>
2018-03-08T17:21:11+00:002018-03-08T17:21:11+00:00http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/genome/entries/88718102-5602-4d70-92ac-383f41451f1fAndrew Martin <div class="component"> <img src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p060jn1h.jpg" class="rsp-img" alt=""data-img-src-68="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/160xn/p060jn1h.jpg" data-img-src-176="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/192xn/p060jn1h.jpg" data-img-src-208="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/256xn/p060jn1h.jpg" data-img-src-304="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/336xn/p060jn1h.jpg" data-img-src-440="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/480xn/p060jn1h.jpg" data-img-src-576="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p060jn1h.jpg" ><p><em>C. H. Middleton was the first gardening superstar, and loved flowers - though the last years of his career were spent exhorting wartime Britain to plant vegetables in the Dig for Victory campaign</em></p> </div> <div class="component prose"><p><strong>The perennial <a title="Gardeners' World" href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09vjs34" target="_blank">Gardeners’ World</a> returns to our screens this week, a show that has now been running for half a century. To celebrate, the BBC Genome blog looks back at some of the pioneer gardening shows on BBC radio and television.</strong></p>
<p>If you go back to the earliest mentions of gardens, gardening and horticulture in the Genome database, you will find them in the very first issue of Radio Times in 1923. As well as people’s own gardens, there was an increase in the use of allotments in the early years of the 20th Century; both world wars, and the economic depression between them, showed the importance of gardening as an activity to provide extra food, and this was reflected in BBC programmes.</p>
<p>The earliest gardening talks were regionally based, as all broadcasting was at the start. In London there was <a title="Mrs Marion Cran" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/e2e5f69bb12b42598bb7c397fb33fa8d" target="_blank">Mrs Marion Cran</a>, in Birmingham <a title="Mr Sidney Rogers" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/39185b37938a489b897ef24033f179dc" target="_blank">Mr Sidney Rogers</a>, and <a title="Mr Richard Treseder" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/418096e07a4748fdba861b4498500c16" target="_blank">Mr Richard Treseder</a> in Cardiff. All three were Fellows of the Royal Horticultural Society. As the network of broadcasting grew programmes began to be shared, with the output of London predominating.</p>
<p><a title="The Week's Work in the Garden" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/72a3c48540ce40a3a171b78ff7313f39" target="_blank">The Week’s Work in the Garden</a> took over as a venue for gardening advice, presented by unnamed members of the Royal Horticultural Society. In 1931 the name of <a title="C.H. Middleton" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/4abefa3377634db0ae25741259faaecb" target="_blank">C.H. Middleton</a> was first seen in the pages of Radio Times: Cecil Henry Middleton had worked at Kew Gardens, and was recommended to the BBC by the Secretary of the RHS. He first presented a series of talks called The Week in the Garden, then in 1934 began <a title="In Your Garden" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/2629752e2699492686173bd2bef2ea12" target="_blank">In Your Garden</a>, the introductory article for which credits him as the BBC’s gardening correspondent. He was to become nationally known just as “Mr Middleton”, and was the first gardening star.</p>
<p>In November 1936 Middleton appeared on television, demonstrating <a title="Autumn Pruning" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/f3cf7903eb694625bbdc94413b5004f3" target="_blank">Autumn Pruning</a>. <a title="In Your Garden" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/ee106232bc6d4716a345474cd6d979ff" target="_blank">In Your Garden</a> also became a television strand soon after, with Middleton creating a garden in the grounds of Alexandra Palace. Television’s ability to show rather than just describe plants was a great boost to the subject. After a few months the series was renamed <a title="In Our Garden" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/e49254b7709f485cafaaf79593cb1816" target="_blank">In Our Garden</a>, since the emphasis was on the BBC’s own plot.</p></div> <div class="component"> <img src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p060jqm6.jpg" class="rsp-img" alt=""data-img-src-68="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/160xn/p060jqm6.jpg" data-img-src-176="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/192xn/p060jqm6.jpg" data-img-src-208="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/256xn/p060jqm6.jpg" data-img-src-304="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/336xn/p060jqm6.jpg" data-img-src-440="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/480xn/p060jqm6.jpg" data-img-src-576="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p060jqm6.jpg" ><p><em>Fred Streeter took over In Your Garden on the Home Service in 1945, and broadcast regularly until 1972. He was the Today programme's gardening expert in his 90s</em></p> </div> <div class="component prose"><p>The Chelsea Flower Show is one of the great occasions in the gardener’s almanac. It began in 1912, and was first the subject of a broadcast in <a title="1927" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/5ea99e036a544c65abbf8f1869b77118" target="_blank">1927</a>. In 1938 television showed the event for the first time. There was another outside broadcast from Chelsea in <a title="1939" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/cc584f77eee5478dbb649b8e46dd3f36" target="_blank">1939</a>, but just over three months later television was closed down just before the outbreak of World War Two. Mr Middleton continued to broadcast on radio, with the talk <a title="Your Garden in Wartime" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/824754ec6dd54049aa7c727e4125da3c" target="_blank">Your Garden in Wartime</a> as well as <a title="In Your Garden" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/371e489371584fef87fa7963af10e58c" target="_blank">In Your Garden</a>, which was now in a regular Sunday afternoon slot. Wartime rationing and the “Dig for Victory” campaign meant that gardening became a subject of national importance. Mr Middleton was not to resume of his television career, as he died in September 1945.</p>
<p>When <a title="In Our Garden" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/1a0a0dc166aa47269499f2b9dd899e02" target="_blank">In Our Garden</a> returned on 9 June 1946, two days after television’s relaunch, it was with a new face, but a familiar voice. Fred Streeter had taken over <a title="In Your Garden" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/cc2c34ac5e0e4c5f8bd76198530d67f1" target="_blank">In Your Garden</a> on the Home Service in June 1945, and so was the natural choice to present In Our Garden. The series expanded its scope, with other experts coming in to discuss topics, such as <a title="Reginald Gamble" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/687856d74e454e66b40c0d9147c6b4a0" target="_blank">Reginald Gamble</a> showing viewers how to keep bees. In 1950 Streeter went further afield and showcased the horticultural endeavours of members of the public in a short series, <a title="Your Garden" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/836e3bedc4f44693b4a71d0a0579cef8" target="_blank">Your Garden</a>.</p>
<p>Involving the public had already become a feature of gardening programmes, with the debut of <a title="Gardeners' Question Time" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/a5d5744e5054897653e5028624bcce6e" target="_blank">Gardeners’ Question Time</a> on the Northern Home Service in November 1948. It took some time for what is now a staple of the Radio 4 schedule to become established on the national Home Service, but viewers were to get a flavour of the programme when one edition was televised from <a title="Harrogate" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/3c861db890214bab926bd3ec16a44a54" target="_blank">Harrogate</a> in June 1955.</p>
<p>In 1957 the Gardeners’ Question Time formula was tried nationwide, under the title <a title="Down the Garden Path" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/7b9e52c8ef9245d6a3adbb5f8e133aba" target="_blank">Down the Garden Path</a>, on the Light Programme. <a title="Gardeners' Question Time" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/e4e460d776684c51a06b87fe10c12786" target="_blank">Gardeners’ Question Time</a> made its full nationwide debut on 29 September 1957 on the Home Service. Freddy Grisewood chaired, with Fred Loads, Bill Sowerbutts and Alan Gemmell as panellists.</p>
<p>In 1950 In Your Garden ended, to be replaced by a series called <a title="Home Grown" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/c7c6a45c5dfe44ebbb762e37d1a11dae" target="_blank">Home Grown</a> fronted by Roy Hay, but this reverted back to the old title in 1957, on Network Three and then on the Home Service and Radio 4 until 1970. In Our Garden gradually withered away on television, reverting to the title In Your Garden as an item in About the Home, part of the afternoon strand <a title="Mainly for Women" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/f11a9e9883dd4dccbbf1afdc54f78eff" target="_blank">Mainly for Women</a>.</p></div> <div class="component"> <img src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p060jr35.jpg" class="rsp-img" alt=""data-img-src-68="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/160xn/p060jr35.jpg" data-img-src-176="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/192xn/p060jr35.jpg" data-img-src-208="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/256xn/p060jr35.jpg" data-img-src-304="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/336xn/p060jr35.jpg" data-img-src-440="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/480xn/p060jr35.jpg" data-img-src-576="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p060jr35.jpg" ><p><em>Percy Thrower was the genial presenter of Gardening Club and later Gardeners' World. Here, in the BBC studio at Gosta Green, Birmingham, in 1957, he shows off his latest crop of Triffids...</em></p> </div> <div class="component prose"><p>Its successor was the long-running <a title="Gardening Club" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/759a82a288964e008e862449912a15a0" target="_blank">Gardening Club</a>, which began in September 1955. Originally part of the Club Night/Club Time strand, it was based at the BBC’s Gosta Green studio in Birmingham – and Birmingham was established as the home of horticultural and agricultural programmes. Gardening Club made a star of its host, Percy Thrower. He had broadcast on radio in <a title="Children's Hour" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/191d3f7eb0fcbe4f33977c8b7f59c1dd" target="_blank">Children’s Hour</a> from 1950, and soon began contributing to television, first appearing in the series <a title="Out of Doors" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/6bf9bbe26583477a8abad7089ea94b60" target="_blank">Out of Doors</a> in 1954.</p>
<p>Gardening Club soldiered on through most of the 1960s under Thrower’s guidance, and was finally added to television’s compost heap in <a title="December 1967" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/3af0903e939144109487dfc33b5bc173" target="_blank">December 1967</a>. The BBC replaced it with a show that went out on BBC2 from 5 January 1968 – in colour, which had just come in as a full service on the channel. The programme was called <a title="Gardeners' World" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/2f3905c62b8a4f85b9247584a23c9f90" target="_blank">Gardeners’ World</a>.</p>
<p>While it was transmitted on what was often called the “minority channel”, Gardeners’ World kept up the reputation established by Gardening Club, but also used the opportunity of the new format to freshen up its approach to the subject – flowers naturally benefitting from the added dimension of colour.</p>
<p>Percy Thrower continued as presenter of Gardeners’ World until 1976. He also had a long association with <a title="Blue Peter" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/1d5c133681ce440595170f32b9af94b4" target="_blank">Blue Peter</a>, in 1974 establishing the programme’s garden (originally at Television Centre, now transplanted to Media City UK in Salford) which helped introduce generations of children to the joys of growing plants.</p>
<p>Thrower has been succeeded by a roster of famous gardening names, but the basic mission of Gardeners’ World to keep viewers up to date with the latest developments in the world of horticulture has remained largely unchanged: allowing of course for the inevitable changes in presentation style in television over the decades. Long may it flourish…</p></div>
2018-03-01T12:43:06+00:002018-03-01T12:43:06+00:00http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/genome/entries/3f3efef0-a17a-4813-8b9e-a77fc85ca712 <div class="component"> <img src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p05zwgdw.jpg" class="rsp-img" alt=""data-img-src-68="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/160xn/p05zwgdw.jpg" data-img-src-176="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/192xn/p05zwgdw.jpg" data-img-src-208="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/256xn/p05zwgdw.jpg" data-img-src-304="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/336xn/p05zwgdw.jpg" data-img-src-440="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/480xn/p05zwgdw.jpg" data-img-src-576="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p05zwgdw.jpg" ><p><em>An image from the title sequence of Down to Earth: the theme tune was composed by folk musicians Ian Clark and Christopher Rowe</em></p> </div> <div class="component prose"><p><strong>Songwriter Ian Clark composed music for TV and radio programmes through the 1970s and 1980s. Here, he describes one memorable job.</strong></p>
<p>In the summer of 1972 I was singing and writing with musician <a title="Christopher Rowe" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/8bff5db92190425080b04889c204b56b" target="_blank">Christopher Rowe</a> and together we had recently produced two albums of songs about the city. We were working for Radio and TV in Hull in various capacities, from presenting BBC Radio Humberside’s weekly Roundabout Folk programme to writing and singing on BBC TV’s Look North.</p>
<p>I was at home for lunch one Thursday when I received a telephone call from a BBC producer I had met a couple of weeks previously when he was working in Hull. He told me he needed a signature tune for a new BBC TV programme featuring environmental issues, called <a title="Down to Earth" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/7ef648118b4f4973a7e3e675d4831980" target="_blank">Down to Earth</a>. He wanted to commission me and Chris Rowe to write it, and he needed it by the following Monday: “About 45 seconds long, with hope in the words and threat in the music”. He explained he planned to use shots of a young woman walking through a cornfield with the high corn alternately obscuring and revealing her to the camera. </p>
<p>Not the most explicit of briefs but it certainly left scope for invention so I said we’d do what we could and let him have the recordings on tape by a railway courier service on Sunday. (No emails and digital recordings in 1972!)</p>
<p>I explained the brief to Chris and, as always, we worked separately to give maximum chance of a result. We produced three versions each, recorded them on tape, with guitar and banjo backings and sent them off from <a title="Hull Paragon station" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/92fbab63fca64d009a1f9230ae77a066" target="_blank">Hull Paragon station</a> on Sunday afternoon.</p></div> <div class="component"> <img src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p05zwn1n.jpg" class="rsp-img" alt=""data-img-src-68="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/160xn/p05zwn1n.jpg" data-img-src-176="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/192xn/p05zwn1n.jpg" data-img-src-208="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/256xn/p05zwn1n.jpg" data-img-src-304="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/336xn/p05zwn1n.jpg" data-img-src-440="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/480xn/p05zwn1n.jpg" data-img-src-576="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p05zwn1n.jpg" ><p><em>Spike Milligan, environmentally-minded as ever, was the guest on the first edition of Down to Earth, showing how to clean up countryside ponds</em></p> </div> <div class="component prose"><p>Monday morning told us that British Rail had gone on strike but hoping we’d beaten the problem I waited for the producer’s call. He rang to tell us the parcel had not arrived and suggested I sing them down the phone. My wife Wendy held the handset and fended off our two children with her feet while I attempted the six signature pieces. “Hang on”, he said, “I’ll put you on speaker. Now the whole gallery at the Television Centre is listening – can you do them again?”</p>
<p>Feeling distinctly uncomfortable, not at all sure of the tunes or the words and totally under-rehearsed, I did them again. He didn't sound overwhelmed and frankly neither was I. In fact I was beginning to regret having accepted the commission. The producer commented that none of the six seemed to fit with the girl in the cornfield. “Haven’t you anything on that?,” he asked. I told him I’d got two lines:</p>
<p><em>Life – deafened by the rush of speed</em></p>
<p><em>Life – drowned by the roars of greed</em></p>
<p>“That’s it!” he said. “Finish that and I’ll fly up to Leeds next Saturday to record it at the BBC sound studios.” I was astonished.</p>
<p>I duly produced the rest, together with a suitable tune:</p>
<p><em>Life – deafened by the rush of speed</em></p>
<p><em>Life – drowned by the roars of greed</em></p>
<p><em>Let’s harmonise the sound</em></p>
<p><em>See clearly what the choice is.</em></p>
<p><em>Computerised or living voices.</em></p>
<p><em>Now’s the time to make a stand,</em></p>
<p><em>For a new and better land.</em></p>
<p><em>Come down to Earth. </em></p>
<p>During a concert in York that Friday night, I unfortunately lost my voice. We met the producer in Leeds on Saturday and BBC Leeds’s local, vocal expert pharmacist brought it back to some degree but the recording was not one of our best. The song was eventually recorded again using a London folk group and the programme went out as planned.</p>
<p>Down to Earth was critical of some of the firms it featured. I remember the first programme was well received by the audience but caused a considerable reaction. </p>
<p>The story gives a real taste of what broadcasting was like back then and the buzz of working at this zany speed. A touch near the edge, but great memories!</p>
<p><em>The broadcast version of the Down to Earth theme tune, "Life", was performed by folk singer <a title="Marian Segal" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/37e051abbbcb4529a9963b4ae0cdf35b" target="_blank">Marian Segal</a> backed by the Derek Price Group. Down to Earth ran from 17 June to 23 August 1972 on BBC One.</em></p></div>
2018-02-07T16:11:42+00:002018-02-07T16:11:42+00:00http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/genome/entries/6a4d997a-5093-4c28-898e-5aa40f1828e7Andrew Martin <div class="component"> <img src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p05xfb9h.jpg" class="rsp-img" alt=""data-img-src-68="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/160xn/p05xfb9h.jpg" data-img-src-176="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/192xn/p05xfb9h.jpg" data-img-src-208="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/256xn/p05xfb9h.jpg" data-img-src-304="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/336xn/p05xfb9h.jpg" data-img-src-440="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/480xn/p05xfb9h.jpg" data-img-src-576="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p05xfb9h.jpg" ><p><em>The original title sequence for Grange Hill was a pastiche of a children's comic, and memorably features the image of a sausage with a fork stuck in it: not a scene that made it into the actual show sadly</em></p> </div> <div class="component prose"><p><strong>There’s nothing like an anniversary to make you feel old, and on 8 February 2018 it is 40 years since the first episode of Grange Hill was broadcast.</strong></p>
<p><a title="Grange Hill" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/bbffa3d3b3ed4320838cbb7ca757ea58" target="_blank">Grange Hill</a> was the first realistic, long-running drama about school, told from the perspective of the children. It was set in a comprehensive school, and so was closer to the actual experiences of most of its audience: many previous school stories had been set in public schools or grammar schools, probably because most writers tended to have had that kind of education. Where other schools were featured they were rarely examined in detail, or were a backdrop to stories that were not fundamentally about the experience of going to school - and that was always what Grange Hill was interested in.</p>
<p>School fiction goes back at least to <a title="Tom Brown's Schooldays" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/c96298cb2ce44ce6b011b830c9f03b65" target="_blank">Tom Brown’s Schooldays</a>, written by Thomas Hughes in the 19th Century. Other writers also drew on their own school experiences, notably Charles Dickens, especially in <a title="David Copperfield" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/97f227966e3b4a1d978e80cf96f1045b" target="_blank">David Copperfield</a>, <a title="Nicholas Nickleby" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/79ec06b46f224c6590e6dd0424a6d1b0" target="_blank">Nicholas Nickleby</a> and <a title="Hard Times" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/2fd94406a701405084dc98d1f052758c" target="_blank">Hard Times</a>. By the early 20th Century children’s comic papers brought new generations of school story writers. <a title="Angela Brazil" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/b52c25ffcbae46b29b115250f0e681ca" target="_blank">Angela Brazil</a> virtually invented the schoolgirl story (where hockey sticks were always jolly), and Enid Blyton and <a title="others" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/c38c1465895b4fc9a8d3a65d235b9b34" target="_blank">others</a> followed. Stories about boys' schools included a long run of adaptations in Children’s Hour of Anthony Buckeridge’s prep school hero <a title="Jennings" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/b60d69e6fd9c47f9839bf5a162e5877c" target="_blank">Jennings</a>, and Frank Richards’ <a title="Billy Bunter" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/c5120db536c548a29cd2e51ea940e3d3" target="_blank">Billy Bunter</a> was featured in a BBC television series of the 1950s and 1960s.</p>
<p>While many of these stories had children as their ostensible heroes, some dramas focused more on teachers. In the late 1950s BBC TV had <a title="The Common Room" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/9d0f528561ee41b684fb292c1c389b89" target="_blank">The Common Room</a> (set in a Secondary Modern school), and <a title="Yorky" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/f527fbd498c94a6e9cfd9a6fc3fe9289" target="_blank">Yorky</a>, starring Wilfred Pickles as a village schoolmaster. In the mid 1960s <a title="This Man Craig" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/0219222489044072bc92724ef945a631" target="_blank">This Man Craig</a> examined life in a Scottish secondary school, while in the 70s there were plays like <a title="Headmaster" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/05fcc746e7824a1f9edcddd58b0becea" target="_blank">Headmaster</a> (and its spin-off series) and <a title="Gotcha/Campion's Interview" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/1b6b084986cd44a5ac3c6e6b59890632" target="_blank">Gotcha/Campion's Interview</a>, a double bill Play for Today looking at aspects of education and how it failed some pupils.</p></div> <div class="component"> <img src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p05xfntl.jpg" class="rsp-img" alt=""data-img-src-68="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/160xn/p05xfntl.jpg" data-img-src-176="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/192xn/p05xfntl.jpg" data-img-src-208="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/256xn/p05xfntl.jpg" data-img-src-304="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/336xn/p05xfntl.jpg" data-img-src-440="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/480xn/p05xfntl.jpg" data-img-src-576="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p05xfntl.jpg" ><p><em>Todd Carty played Tucker Jenkins (pictured, left, with Alan, played by George Armstrong, and Benny, played by Terry Sue-Patt) from the first episode of Grange Hill until 1982. After the spin-off Tucker's Luck he returned to the role in 2003 (pictured, right) and for the final episode in 2008</em></p> </div> <div class="component prose"><p>It was in this environment, reacting to the rise of comprehensive schools and flavoured by the cynicism of the mid-70s, that Grange Hill was born. Its creator and original writer Phil Redmond had previously written sitcom episodes and children’s drama, mainly for ITV. They turned down the idea for Grange Hill, but BBC executive producer Anna Home was more receptive.</p>
<p>Grange Hill was a product of its times, and was a departure from the children’s drama previously on offer: <a title="classic adaptations" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/9c63241a5c0b4f7cbbcc4ec55084ac3c" target="_blank">classic adaptations</a>, <a title="fantasy" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/7729d287f6c1445a95dd75be9d36a04f" target="_blank">fantasy </a> or ‘caper’ <a title="adventure stories" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/6d269be02a404a54babe26d16b56dff8" target="_blank">adventure stories</a>. Very little children’s drama tackled the daily realities of their lives – except educational fare such as the schools’ series <a title="Scene" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/c99c842a303141caadf296b7c210ee56" target="_blank">Scene</a>, which could be safely shown to children with a teacher on hand. Grange Hill was shown in a slot when parents would be busy preparing meals or coming home from work, and some were concerned that it <a title="portrayed bad behaviour" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/00a5d606352841529e4c25e38df85983" target="_blank">portrayed bad behaviour</a> and bad language at a time of day when children were watching unsupervised, and didn't condemn it unequivocally. </p>
<p>Occasionally the bad behaviour teetered over into actual crime – shoplifting, vandalism and theft. Bullying was a topic which it would have been unrealistic to ignore, and was embodied in characters such as Michael Doyle, Jackie Heron and <a title="Gripper Stebson" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/457057c0bb1349639e4b1c368b8424cc" target="_blank">Gripper Stebson</a>. As the early characters – Tucker, Alan and Benny, <a title="Trisha Yates" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/531b6ae6a4fb4de8b937563f855f6af3" target="_blank">Trisha Yates</a>, Cathy Hargreaves, <a title="Suzanne Ross" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/bb74668d7afc4dda8be31450cdf3e883" target="_blank">Suzanne Ross</a> – were gradually replaced by successive generations of new pupils, more difficult topics were introduced. One of the most prominent stories was the heroin addiction of <a title="Zammo" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/fa7835ce8dc8465898bc43e50f99b411" target="_blank">Zammo </a> (Lee Macdonald), which tied in with the <a title=""Just Say No"" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/c3575a8ed21a4b3e8d47e4ecb4e4c189" target="_blank">“Just Say No”</a> anti-drugs campaign. Another poignant plotline in the 80s concerned troubled Danny Kendall and his thorny relationship with teacher <a title="Mr Bronson" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/9651b078aa8e4a9da7f0b6591232d88c" target="_blank">Mr Bronson</a> (Michael Sheard). In the early 90s there was the controversial depiction of the teenage pregnancy of <a title="Chrissy Mainwaring" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/60538c8b059f4a8f9926166387082f99" target="_blank">Chrissy Mainwaring</a>.</p>
<p>For all the focus on Grange Hill’s pupils, as with Mr Bronson, there were also good roles for the actors playing teachers. Other memorable teachers included PE teacher <a title="Mr Baxter" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/fa01f9c83b084a3c80569bac6cb76f2c" target="_blank">Mr Baxter</a> (Michael Cronin) and long-serving head teacher <a title="Mrs McCluskey" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/de1f3e8629254a47a3c67bece4ff86e5" target="_blank">Mrs McCluskey</a> (Gwynneth Powell).</p></div> <div class="component"> <img src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p05xh78f.jpg" class="rsp-img" alt=""data-img-src-68="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/160xn/p05xh78f.jpg" data-img-src-176="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/192xn/p05xh78f.jpg" data-img-src-208="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/256xn/p05xh78f.jpg" data-img-src-304="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/336xn/p05xh78f.jpg" data-img-src-440="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/480xn/p05xh78f.jpg" data-img-src-576="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p05xh78f.jpg" ><p><em>Grange Hill in the 2000s had changed with the times: Emma (Daniella Fray), Tanya (Kirsten Cassidy) and Annie (Lauren Bunney) hone their IT skills, a phrase that wouldn't have meant much to Grange Hill pupils in 1978</em></p> </div> <div class="component prose"><p>In later years, Grange Hill was targeted at a younger age range, in line with BBC policy for its children’s programmes, when teenagers were no longer seen as part of the audience for children’s programmes. Some of the innovations were controversial, with occasional fantasy sequences, and a toning down of the drama to suit a younger target audience. The location of the show became less defined following the outsourcing of production to Phil Redmond’s own company, when recording switched to Liverpool.</p>
<p>Redmond had moved on to other projects after the first few years of Grange Hill, including the Channel 4 soap Brookside, and later Hollyoaks. He wanted to restore the original feel of Grange Hill, including bringing back the original title theme – a piece of library music called “Chicken Man”. But after a few series it was decided to call it a day, and, with a cameo appearance by original cast member Todd Carty (as Tucker Jenkins, who had also been spun off into his own series <a title="Tucker's Luck" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/45f8c0165c5e4b04a895e038d3431781" target="_blank">Tucker’s Luck</a> in the early 80s), the final episode of Grange Hill was transmitted on <a title="15 September 2008" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/ea32abdb59424e238bc17f0492bb552a" target="_blank">15 September 2008</a>.</p></div>
2018-02-05T11:42:27+00:002018-02-05T11:42:27+00:00http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/genome/entries/a891d03a-1430-441a-a294-3ebd209cab59Simon Mahon <div class="component"> <img src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p05x8jq7.jpg" class="rsp-img" alt=""data-img-src-68="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/160xn/p05x8jq7.jpg" data-img-src-176="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/192xn/p05x8jq7.jpg" data-img-src-208="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/256xn/p05x8jq7.jpg" data-img-src-304="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/336xn/p05x8jq7.jpg" data-img-src-440="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/480xn/p05x8jq7.jpg" data-img-src-576="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p05x8jq7.jpg" > </div> <div class="component prose"><p><strong>Tuesday 6 February 2018 marks the 60th anniversary of the Munich air disaster, when a plane carrying Manchester United players crashed while attempting to take off from Munich-Riem airport in Germany.</strong></p>
<p>There were 23 fatalities in the crash and team manager Matt Busby was severely injured. Busby spent months in hospital and was so badly hurt that he was <a title="Busby injured" href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-42793892" target="_blank">read his last rites by a Catholic priest</a>, but he recovered and attended that year's <a title="cup final link" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/cf9431681f3c4e8d8b7d43b27c6dfaf3" target="_blank">FA Cup final</a>. <br /><br /></p></div> <div class="component"> <img src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p05x4nyf.jpg" class="rsp-img" alt=""data-img-src-68="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/160xn/p05x4nyf.jpg" data-img-src-176="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/192xn/p05x4nyf.jpg" data-img-src-208="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/256xn/p05x4nyf.jpg" data-img-src-304="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/336xn/p05x4nyf.jpg" data-img-src-440="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/480xn/p05x4nyf.jpg" data-img-src-576="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p05x4nyf.jpg" ><p><em>The final proved to be one step too far for a depleted Manchester United side, two goals from Nat Lofthouse saw Bolton win.</em></p> </div> <div class="component prose"><p>The tragedy occurred at 3.04pm and the script (pictured below) for that night's News bulletin broadcast on the BBC Light Programme showed that 23 passengers initially survived. Co-pilot Ken Rayment and star player <a title="Duncan Edwards " href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/592cb17521ca465ea937b3740cd7d12c" target="_blank">Duncan Edwards</a> later died in hospital.</p>
<p>The BBC has made a <a title="list programmes " href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/search/0/20?order=rank&q=%22Munich+air+disaster%22#search" target="_blank">number of programmes</a> about the crash in the past 60 years, including <a title="surviving disaster prog" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/026973f0fec1418d8ca248797ad6c2e3" target="_blank">Surviving Disaster</a>, a drama documentary retelling the story in 2006.<br /><br /></p></div> <div class="component"> <img src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p05x4lmq.jpg" class="rsp-img" alt=""data-img-src-68="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/160xn/p05x4lmq.jpg" data-img-src-176="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/192xn/p05x4lmq.jpg" data-img-src-208="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/256xn/p05x4lmq.jpg" data-img-src-304="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/336xn/p05x4lmq.jpg" data-img-src-440="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/480xn/p05x4lmq.jpg" data-img-src-576="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p05x4lmq.jpg" > </div> <div class="component prose"><p>In 2008, to mark the 50th anniversary of the disaster, <a title="One Life Gregg" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/2581c80fb0324c42b4a75d951c706958" target="_blank">One Life</a> on BBC One followed survivor and former Manchester United player Harry Gregg as he returned to the scene of the crash for the first time. The former goalkeeper met the son of a pregnant woman whom he had pulled from the wreckage to safety in 1958.<br /><br /></p></div> <div class="component"> <img src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p05x4qhh.jpg" class="rsp-img" alt=""data-img-src-68="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/160xn/p05x4qhh.jpg" data-img-src-176="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/192xn/p05x4qhh.jpg" data-img-src-208="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/256xn/p05x4qhh.jpg" data-img-src-304="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/336xn/p05x4qhh.jpg" data-img-src-440="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/480xn/p05x4qhh.jpg" data-img-src-576="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p05x4qhh.jpg" ><p><em>Despite serious injuries Matt Busby returned to manage Manchester United the following season and built a new team around the Munich survivors. Busby died in 1994 aged 84.</em></p> </div>
2018-01-30T15:19:57+00:002018-01-30T15:19:57+00:00http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/genome/entries/d64a2859-b651-4767-a9f6-8e808880caacMarsha Dunstan <div class="component"> <img src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p05tfjgq.jpg" class="rsp-img" alt=""data-img-src-68="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/160xn/p05tfjgq.jpg" data-img-src-176="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/192xn/p05tfjgq.jpg" data-img-src-208="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/256xn/p05tfjgq.jpg" data-img-src-304="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/336xn/p05tfjgq.jpg" data-img-src-440="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/480xn/p05tfjgq.jpg" data-img-src-576="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p05tfjgq.jpg" > </div> <div class="component prose"><p><strong>The working year is well under way and every day millions of commuters in Britain set out to make the best of two worlds: home and work. Follow how their experiences have been portrayed on TV and radio.</strong></p>
<p>Ever since the <a title="locomotive" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/b9495c509e7e4951bc75f03d957c9bb3" target="_blank">Victorian steam locomotive</a> extended our range beyond that of the horse and carriage, we’ve commuted ever greater distances between home and work. This deceptively simple return journey has always told us a lot about how we live and about the values we attach to work and home - and the lengths we’ll go to achieve the best of both worlds.</p>
<p>In 1959, the <a title="Living Around London" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/cdbaa22b5ffa4310bc913d637346b509" target="_blank">Living Around London</a> segment of In the South-East highlighted the one million-plus people who commuted daily to the capital. Housing wasn’t their only problem, they also faced social challenges. Questions were asked about the impact of their arrival on local communities in <a title="Commuter and community" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/b65f92adcd974a0f8c47d120c0161b05" target="_blank">The Commuter and the Community</a> and <a title="Divided" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/a602f76d6d9044bfb1836e5fb99c8a64" target="_blank">The Divided Village</a>; and on farming in <a title="The Human Side" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/1f9f5dc95d76407586f0200dad352280" target="_blank">The Human Side</a>. <a title="Yeoman" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/1f9f5dc95d76407586f0200dad352280" target="_blank"><br /></a></p></div> <div class="component"> <img src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p05tfjhh.jpg" class="rsp-img" alt=""data-img-src-68="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/160xn/p05tfjhh.jpg" data-img-src-176="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/192xn/p05tfjhh.jpg" data-img-src-208="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/256xn/p05tfjhh.jpg" data-img-src-304="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/336xn/p05tfjhh.jpg" data-img-src-440="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/480xn/p05tfjhh.jpg" data-img-src-576="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p05tfjhh.jpg" ><p><em>Model village: the making of a commuter utopia, in Living Room, part of the Modern Times series</em></p> </div> <div class="component prose"><p>However, the commuter belt continued to expand relentlessly, notch by notch. In 1970, <a title="Woman's Hour" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/b9dc543b9acd4e37a62bc18b7c831443" target="_blank">Women’s Hour</a> featured a portrait of Brenchley, a commuter village in Kent, where there had been “more changes in the last 20 years than the previous 800”. By 1989, commuting was taking over as a way of life even in the most rural areas and <a title="Home Front" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/71fa6074b6044362bb169aaaccd24fd0" target="_blank">The Home Front</a> raised concerns about commuting urban incomers being raised as far away as Wales. Development in rural Kent was a subject that didn't go away, as demonstrated by two programmes broadcast 34 years apart: <a title="Plot" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/deb7f54c9f5049a08115c068fdd5d552" target="_blank">Blessed Plot</a> in 1965, and <a title="Living " href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/50fc40a55c3b4f3492beb2f5a6260cf2" target="_blank">Living Room</a> in 1999.</p>
<p>Further back in time, if you expected a <a title="Killer" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/a3d6df5d79634602a396e84c62864cab" target="_blank">Commuter Belt Killer</a> to have a season’s ticket and a briefcase, you would be wrong - by 100 million years. The title refers, in fact, to the dinosaurs that once roamed the then tropical swamps of Surrey, the subject of this four-part series on Radio 4.</p></div> <div class="component"> <img src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p05tfknd.jpg" class="rsp-img" alt=""data-img-src-68="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/160xn/p05tfknd.jpg" data-img-src-176="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/192xn/p05tfknd.jpg" data-img-src-208="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/256xn/p05tfknd.jpg" data-img-src-304="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/336xn/p05tfknd.jpg" data-img-src-440="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/480xn/p05tfknd.jpg" data-img-src-576="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p05tfknd.jpg" > </div> <div class="component prose"><p>How did 20th-Century commuters feel about their journeys? Programme-makers went out to document their experiences in a variety of ways. In 1979, Network made the journey on board the <a title="Yarmouth" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/bd22632c9f194d3fbe93c2d4cc2ff250" target="_blank">7:12 ex-Yarmouth</a> in pictures, words and music. Molly Dineen’s <a title="Molly" href=" http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/1248626fe362496491b35e2ba9b94341" target="_blank">Heart of the Angel</a> for the series 40 Minutes traced 24 intense hours in the life of London’s Angel tube station, its travellers and staff. In <a title="Enterprise" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/0138e389bc55415ab5904093000b04cd" target="_blank">Enterprise Culture</a>, the country’s economic divide came under the spotlight as Northerners talked about the hardship and uncertainty of having to go South every week in search of work. Few – then and now - would disagree with <a title="long day" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/0e86ede721c84284ab02d18bfc38c40f" target="_blank">A Long Day’s Journey</a> from 1988 that found the whole business of commuting very stressful. By 2004, the idea of “time poverty” had taken hold and <a title="You Yours" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/b9ae8f96ac2d4d4a9e0985a22f6ff5dd">You and Yours</a> included a search for the individual who commutes the farthest.</p>
<p>British commuters have long asked whether they are getting a fair deal from rail companies and in 1993 Inside Story’s report about Network SouthEast, <a title="Old" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/b9ae8f96ac2d4d4a9e0985a22f6ff5dd" target="_blank">Old, Dirty and Late</a> set out to “discover what lies behind the commuters' misery” but also showed the challenges faced by rail staff. </p></div> <div class="component"> <img src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p05tyf41.jpg" class="rsp-img" alt=""data-img-src-68="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/160xn/p05tyf41.jpg" data-img-src-176="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/192xn/p05tyf41.jpg" data-img-src-208="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/256xn/p05tyf41.jpg" data-img-src-304="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/336xn/p05tyf41.jpg" data-img-src-440="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/480xn/p05tyf41.jpg" data-img-src-576="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p05tyf41.jpg" > </div> <div class="component prose"><p>The train is not, of course, the commuter’s only option, although the emphasis in the listings is increasingly on public transport. Britain’s <a title="motorists" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/996b4f2b857c4eedacb64f53d34c2332" target="_blank">10 million motorists</a>, were in 1965 already wondering if they were being priced out of their cars, and earlier that year <a title="Wheel 2" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/026f077bcd04476294648914c8c7852c" target="_blank">Wheelbase</a> had debated the virtues of buses versus cars. But not even the iconic Routemaster bus and its conductors could resist the march of progress and First Sight's <a title="Routemaster" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/65c52dfd86ea4919903bd5e49255a5c4" target="_blank">Fares Please</a> joined commuters and crews on a valedictory journey. For many, “it's not just a bus but a social service that will be lost.”</p>
<p>We read Genome listings with 20-20 hindsight. Thus, we know the Routemaster name was revived but the bus was not the same. Similarly, Genome sometimes affords us a glimpse of an idea that only many years later became reality, like charging cars to drive in central London, mentioned in this 1966 profile of then Minister of Transport, <a title="Castle" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/1f66ad87b7844c71a66f6aed7d0b0d09" target="_blank">Barbara Castle</a>.</p></div> <div class="component"> <img src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p05tfjlz.jpg" class="rsp-img" alt=""data-img-src-68="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/160xn/p05tfjlz.jpg" data-img-src-176="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/192xn/p05tfjlz.jpg" data-img-src-208="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/256xn/p05tfjlz.jpg" data-img-src-304="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/336xn/p05tfjlz.jpg" data-img-src-440="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/480xn/p05tfjlz.jpg" data-img-src-576="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p05tfjlz.jpg" > </div> <div class="component prose"><p>Commuting has provided plenty of rich material for radio and television dramatists: all those apparent strangers cooped up together with limitless possibilities for improbable chance meetings, like Frederic Raphael’s hero, Colin the “creative commuter” (David Suchet), and his greatest fan, Angela (Frances Tomelty) in <a title="Muse" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/0a700762f866482dae505da880122d2c" target="_blank">The Muse</a>. In The Commuters’ Tales, travellers on the Southern Region in 1971 pass their time like Chaucer's pilgrims by telling stories, including <a title="Director" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/4a1bebd597b745d0b9e63f98f64a1f8d" target="_blank">The Tale of the Company Director</a>, <a title="Bank" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/9539bb31c5b54c69a8e28516e1e10067" target="_blank">The Tale of the Sub-Bank Manager</a> and <a title="2nd-hand" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/fad514c7a4e64f95a919b7244de108d3" target="_blank">The Tale of the Second-hand Car Salesman</a>.</p>
<p>In 1975, Tom (Richard Briers) declared boldly that “commuting isn’t for the thinking man” and set out with Barbara (Felicity Kendall) to become self-sufficient in Surbiton and live <a title="Good Life" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/7d8cf4290439470a85c704c79b801a10" target="_blank">The Good Life</a>, much to the horror of their neighbours Margo and Jerry (Penelope Keith and Paul Eddington).</p></div> <div class="component"> <img src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p05tfjp0.jpg" class="rsp-img" alt=""data-img-src-68="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/160xn/p05tfjp0.jpg" data-img-src-176="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/192xn/p05tfjp0.jpg" data-img-src-208="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/256xn/p05tfjp0.jpg" data-img-src-304="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/336xn/p05tfjp0.jpg" data-img-src-440="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/480xn/p05tfjp0.jpg" data-img-src-576="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p05tfjp0.jpg" ><p><em>Plotting escape: Richard Briers and Felicity Kendall as Tom and Barbara in The Good Life</em></p> </div> <div class="component prose"><p>On the other hand, computer TD30X could only dream of commuting in the Radio 4 Christmas fantasy, <a title="Computacarol" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/b75f06a1c7384f23b25b5851dcc2a2f6" target="_blank">Computacarol</a>. “I want to be human, not just compute. If only I could commute, then I would be free. To be human. I'd feel alive. If I could be 9 to 5. Then I'd be free.”</p>
<p>There is human yearning on the move, too. In <a title="Barry" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/6b7890a215414017be372c91f96860de" target="_blank">Film 85</a>, Barry Norman reviewed Falling in Love. Starring Meryl Streep and Robert De Niro, it was the greatest commuter romance since Brief Encounter. The <a title="Meryl" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/313e5cf139df40bf96af02c2df8a6739" target="_blank">film </a>itself was shown on BBC Two in 1992.</p></div> <div class="component prose"><p>Commuting has created a whole new genre of radio programme. What we listen to on the way to and from work has been driven by the commuter’s need for information and aural companionship. In 1979, BBC Radio London’s <a title="Rush" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/c47f35f4e870448ebd830dfa33d30296" target="_blank">Rush Hour</a> with Susie Barnes proclaimed “London's brightest breakfast show starts your day with news, information, what's on and good music. The fastest travel service in town gets you to work easily whether you commute by car, train, boat or plane.” At the other end of the day, on Radio 2, <a title="Dunn" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/d1e1866f726146e9a64156f9d8064ccb" target="_blank">John Dunn</a> got us home again with his Drive Time Show, complete with Mystery Voice competition.</p></div> <div class="component"> <img src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p05tfjsl.jpg" class="rsp-img" alt=""data-img-src-68="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/160xn/p05tfjsl.jpg" data-img-src-176="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/192xn/p05tfjsl.jpg" data-img-src-208="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/256xn/p05tfjsl.jpg" data-img-src-304="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/336xn/p05tfjsl.jpg" data-img-src-440="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/480xn/p05tfjsl.jpg" data-img-src-576="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p05tfjsl.jpg" ><p><em>The voice of Drive Time: John Dunn, keeping us company on the way home</em></p> </div> <div class="component prose"><p>Life after commuting has always been a happy prospect, as <a title="Escape" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/627f044cf94c490fab81c5c1250fd2c4" target="_blank">Escape to the Country</a> demonstrated in March 2003, featuring Chris and Sue who hoped to escape London after “50 years of commuting have taken their toll”. And don’t we all dream of swapping our desk for a hammock on a faraway tropical island? (More difficult than you’d think, according to a former governor of <a title="Fiji" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/4379fc0d3bb54080999ecee021526507" target="_blank">Fiji</a>.)</p>
<p>But how about a time when we don’t commute at all? In 1988, when the <a title="electronic" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/9a401f92e40849c5ab1a158c225d72e0" target="_blank">electronic cottage</a> threatened to put an end to going into the office, it sounded like such a good idea, with the delightful prospect of working from home, uninterrupted and quite invisible in our pyjamas. But it didn’t quite turn out like that. Now we have video calling and all those helpful apps that let us work together remotely in real time. So, even at home, we’re still left with the commuter’s perennial problem: What am I going to wear to work today?</p></div>
2018-01-17T13:14:27+00:002018-01-17T13:14:27+00:00http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/genome/entries/0d7d5d98-e12f-4a3d-bf40-ecc930435554Andrew Martin <div class="component"> <img src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p05v54v9.jpg" class="rsp-img" alt=""data-img-src-68="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/160xn/p05v54v9.jpg" data-img-src-176="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/192xn/p05v54v9.jpg" data-img-src-208="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/256xn/p05v54v9.jpg" data-img-src-304="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/336xn/p05v54v9.jpg" data-img-src-440="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/480xn/p05v54v9.jpg" data-img-src-576="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p05v54v9.jpg" ><p><em>Tommy Handley, born 17 January 1894 (or 1892, or 12 January 1896, depending who you believe) was Britain's most popular comedian of the Second World War</em></p> </div> <div class="component prose"><p>On Sunday 9 January 1949, just after the 5pm repeat broadcast of the latest episode of <a title="ITMA" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/1a52e230b3bc4b0bb85d14f942654278" target="_blank">ITMA</a>, the nation’s favourite comedy show, there was a shock newsflash: Tommy Handley, the star of the programme, had died from a cerebral haemorrhage.</p>
<p>It’s That Man Again (ITMA) began 10 years earlier. It was an attempt to follow the success of <a title="Band Waggon" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/9828f98645d04ccab963d905f16295c1" target="_blank">Band Waggon</a>, the BBC’s first regular weekly comedy and variety show. Handley, a well-known comedian who had first broadcast in <a title="1925" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/c0e71de4832043b989cc648d57792953" target="_blank">1925</a>, was chosen to star in the programme.</p>
<p>The first idea was a take on <a title="George Burns and Gracie Allen's" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/49f4bda2235b48b6aadf732526d31f2a" target="_blank">George Burns and Gracie Allen’s</a> US comedy series, but this did not fit Handley’s style. Ted Kavanagh, Handley's regular writer, was brought in to help. The producer was Francis Worsley, who had worked with Handley on an outside broadcast about <a title="Cheddar Gorge" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/3cc72006be9049749993b6c843c5f2e4" target="_blank">Cheddar Gorge</a> two years before. Handley, Kavanagh and Worsley would form a solid partnership through more than 300 programmes over the next decade.</p>
<p>Kavanagh's format saw Handley as the entertainment director of a cruise ship, with Cecilia Eddy as his secretary, Cilly, and Eric Egan as Vladivostooge, a Russian inventor. Comic patter was interspersed with items including songs, music from a resident orchestra, and a quiz. <a title="It's That Man Again" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/3e95b7a9346240718a97e89f199a8dfa" target="_blank">It's That Man Again</a> was chosen as the programme's title, from a popular newspaper headline of the time – but when the papers said it, they were talking about Adolf Hitler.</p>
<p>Six programmes were scheduled to go out fortnightly, starting in summer 1939, but only four had been broadcast when war broke out. The planned schedules were dropped in favour of music and talks, while various BBC production departments were evacuated to different parts of the country.</p></div> <div class="component"> <img src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p05v5nzs.jpg" class="rsp-img" alt=""data-img-src-68="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/160xn/p05v5nzs.jpg" data-img-src-176="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/192xn/p05v5nzs.jpg" data-img-src-208="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/256xn/p05v5nzs.jpg" data-img-src-304="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/336xn/p05v5nzs.jpg" data-img-src-440="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/480xn/p05v5nzs.jpg" data-img-src-576="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p05v5nzs.jpg" ><p><em>Mrs Mopp (Dorothy Summers) and Tommy Handley admire a model of a weapon to win the war in ITMA's middle years. Summers got her own show, The Private Life of Mrs Mopp, in 1946</em></p> </div> <div class="component prose"><p>The Variety Department was sent to Bristol, and it was from there that It's That Man Again was relaunched in <a title="late September" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/57669fadeb4a4e24a69b21ddcb3b609e" target="_blank">late September</a>. The cruise ship theme was ditched, and the quiz element of the show was quickly replaced by Radio Fakenburg, a spoof of Radio Luxembourg. It was also necessary to change the cast, as only actors who had been vetted by the Ministry of Information were allowed to broadcast. The new faces were <a title="ITMA " href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/57669fadeb4a4e24a69b21ddcb3b609e" target="_blank">Maurice Denham, Sam Costa, Vera Lennox</a> and Jack Train. </p>
<p>Handley now became the Minister of Aggravation and Mysteries, in the Office of Twerps. Fun was made of the numerous departments and regulations which came into force with the start of the war, and the prevalence of acronyms inspired the renaming of the programme as ITMA, devised by Handley while doodling the show's title.</p>
<p>In early 1940 ITMA came off air while the cast embarked on a stage tour. Returning in summer 1941, ITMA was now set in Foaming-at-the-Mouth, a seaside town of which Handley became mayor, and it was temporarily renamed <a title="It's That Sand Again " href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/294410e9876a4751800712b217375230" target="_blank">It’s That Sand Again</a>. Later in the war, Handley managed a munitions factory, became the Squire of Much-Fiddling, and then he was “a Man with a Plan”. The “plan” was lost, stolen, changed, etc, though it was never revealed what it actually was. </p>
<p>ITMA had a hectic pace, with Handley a master of quickfire delivery with a natural instinct for delivering a line perfectly. He was "on stage" almost constantly, interacting with other characters as they came and went, often via the famous "ITMA door". This was a small sound effects box that mimicked doors opening and closing. Other characters would pester Handley by phone, such as the <a title="character" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/aed1d5161c224e659a8b64f66d5d9a1d" target="_blank">German spy, Funf </a>, whose distinctive voice was achieved by speaking sideways into a glass tumbler.</p>
<p>The various broad-brush caricatures that populated ITMA all had their own catchphrases, which often passed into common parlance. When Maurice Denham was called up, Lola Tickle was replaced by Mrs Mopp (Dorothy Summers), whose entrance was accompanied by "Can I do you now sir?"; she departed to "TTFN" ("Ta Ta For Now"). Others regulars included Colonel Chinstrap, also played by Jack Train, who misinterpreted almost any remark as an offer of a drink ("I Don’t Mind if I Do"); the Diver ("I’m going down now sir") and Claude and Cecil ("After you Claude" - "No, after you Cecil").</p></div> <div class="component"> <img src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p05v5qmz.jpg" class="rsp-img" alt=""data-img-src-68="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/160xn/p05v5qmz.jpg" data-img-src-176="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/192xn/p05v5qmz.jpg" data-img-src-208="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/256xn/p05v5qmz.jpg" data-img-src-304="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/336xn/p05v5qmz.jpg" data-img-src-440="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/480xn/p05v5qmz.jpg" data-img-src-576="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p05v5qmz.jpg" ><p><em>Colonel Chinstrap (Jack Train) contemplates going on the waggon. The character also lived on beyond ITMA, including appearances on The Goon Show</em></p> </div> <div class="component prose"><p>In early 1941, due to the bombing raids on Bristol, the Variety Department had decamped to Bangor in North Wales. After a couple of years attacks on London seemed largely over, so the department returned to the capital, and ITMA was broadcast from the Criterion Theatre on Piccadilly Circus. In its last years, it came from the nearby Paris Studio.</p>
<p>There were experiments with broadcasting from the naval base at <a title="Scapa Flow" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/19603ecc29a146a4a152349ac642424b" target="_blank">Scapa Flow</a> and Woolwich barracks, among other places, which helped determine the ideal audience size – too small and people became self-conscious; too large and it slowed the pace down. ITMA also pioneered warming up the audience, rather than plunging straight into the programme.</p>
<p>There was such demand for Handley that he also appeared in Tommy Handley’s Half-Hour, designed for overseas reception, and other programmes. ITMA is reckoned to have had the largest audience of any radio show in history – tens of millions, at home and worldwide. In 1942 the cast were even asked to perform a special show for the Royal Family and household at Windsor Castle.</p>
<p>As the war drew to an end ITMA celebrated Victory in Europe day with a <a title="V-ITMA" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/3cb5d3262a86451bb3f98a6e37b169e8" target="_blank">special V-ITMA edition</a>. While the country struggled with austerity, ITMA got away from it all, and Handley became the governor of <a title="Tomtopia" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/1a1be35a2a344beb9a684dbdefda5990" target="_blank">"Tomtopia", a South Sea island</a>. There was a shake-up of the cast, with some familiar figures written out. </p></div> <div class="component"> <img src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p05v5rzg.jpg" class="rsp-img" alt=""data-img-src-68="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/160xn/p05v5rzg.jpg" data-img-src-176="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/192xn/p05v5rzg.jpg" data-img-src-208="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/256xn/p05v5rzg.jpg" data-img-src-304="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/336xn/p05v5rzg.jpg" data-img-src-440="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/480xn/p05v5rzg.jpg" data-img-src-576="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640xn/p05v5rzg.jpg" ><p><em>Tommy Handley, producer Francis Worsley and writer Ted Kavanagh hard at work on another edition of ITMA</em></p> </div> <div class="component prose"><p>For its last two series ITMA returned to Britain, where Handley was first a government adviser, then looking for work and living in a hostel called Henry Hall (after the bandleader). In the <a title="300th episode" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/40f9e34602cb428884fbd3eef8bd7c3b" target="_blank">300th episode</a> Handley was employed to look after a waxworks, which contained “The Hall of ITMA’s Past”, allowing cameos by some of the earlier characters.</p>
<p>The later cast included Molly Weir, <a title="Later ITMA" href="http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/de1aa5a6c2314d30a4d68af7ad266612" target="_blank">Joan Harben, Deryck Guyler</a> (whose characters including Liverpool-accented Frisby Dyke, named after a Merseyside department store) and his future Sykes co-star, Hattie Jacques. Jacques played Sophie Tuckshop, a schoolgirl glutton who would describe her eye-watering – if not mouth-watering – feasts (“But I’m all right now”).</p>
<p>When Handley died in 1949, the nation was stunned. There were outpourings of grief at his passing, with memorial services in both London and Liverpool.</p>
<p>It’s hard to judge the humour of the past objectively. The modern ear may struggle to find anything funny in ITMA, with its catchphrases and tortuous puns – but it was of its times. Many references were highly topical, quickly becoming so obscure that even the production team couldn’t remember what they meant. But this feeling of a finger on the pulse was part of its appeal. Among the danger of wartime, and in the difficult peace that followed, it was part of the fabric of shared experience, keeping people calm and carrying on.</p></div>